This Is No Way To Balance A Budget
Apr 21, 2011 Political
Looks like the federal government is having trouble with simple math and accounting procedures. Politicians of all stripes talk about balancing the budget and living within our means but none of them have grasped the concept that if cash out is greater than cash in there will be a deficit.
Last year the government paid more out to people than it took in from taxpayers. People on some kind of government support amounted to $2.3 TRILLION. These social welfare programs cost us more money than the $2.2 TRILLION that people paid in taxes. That means there is 0.1 TRILLION dollars on the negative side and we had to spread that 0.1 TRILLION among all our other obligations. Yes, there was other income but not enough to account for the more than a trillion dollar deficit we ran last year.
We are at the tipping point where what we pay in taxes is about equal to what we pay out for social programs and this is not good. We cannot meet our other obligations with this kind of imbalance and as long as social programs are the sacred cows of the Democrats we will continue to run deficits until our entire system collapses.
We need to have serious reform of our temporary social programs so that there is no incentive to stay on them and we need to reform Social Security and Medicare so that benefits stabilize and the programs are eventually privatized so people can have a real return on their investments. We need to stop implementing programs that end up making people slaves to the government at the expense of the people actually paying taxes and end this cycle of ever increasing deficits as a result of poorly run social programs.
While Barack Obama is running around the country (ignoring the victims of the terrible storms in the South) to raise money for Democrats (and his reelection campaign) he is also giving speeches about the budget. His only answer is to raise taxes on the wealthy when this could never, ever solve the problem even if 100% of their wealth was confiscated.
Repeal the current tax system, implement a flat tax system (for everyone) with no loopholes, reduce corporate tax rates and close the loopholes in that system and completely revamp social programs while cutting out unnecessary programs and we can get back to sound fiscal footing.
Unfortunately, Obama seems to have been surfing instead of attending class as he suffers from the same knowledge deficit as those who think we can manage by spending more than we take in.
A hand up, not a handout…
In a related story, the government is on pace to hit the debt ceiling by next week. No Easter recess for them…
Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: budget, economy, social programs, taxes, tipping point