Westborough Taxpayers Association

Len Mead

WestboroughTaxpayersAssociation.com Westborough, MA 01581

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How Are We REALLY Gonna Stop Federal Spending?

 7-15-11

Hi Friends & Conservatives. 

The spectacle of elected Democrats spitting at proposed Republican approaches to actually reducing spending with no new taxes (in return for raising our debt ceiling) has got to make any reasonable taxpayer crazy and furious.  I guess that that kinda describes me – but you knew that already.  In fact, Democrats have NOT put any national budget together (as required by law) for two years including the current crisis.  They shrewdly wait for responsible conservatives to do so and then demagogue them as heartless and cruel - - - so vote for US DEMOCRATS NEXT ELECTION!  We’ll take care of you.

This “Realpolitik as usual” has got us into the nightmare we’re now in - -a $14 trillion national debt our great grandchildren will be burdened with paying.

Barbara Anderson, my hero and head of Citizens for Limited Taxation,  just proposed (below in her column) that a minimal solution would be supporting a 1% REDUCTION in federal spending for 6 years until a constitutional amendment passes requiring a federal balanced budget.  She has faith our elected “representatives” have the integrity to cut where we need it.  I don’t however.  I cite as evidence what always happens when our liberal “representatives” run out of money.  They always threaten to “cut” what we need the most.  Schools, Police, Fire - - - unless, of course, we “solve” their problem with tax increases. .  Over and over and over.  It ain’t gonna change, in my view, until conservatives replace the Dems.

My humble suggestion, stolen from Loren Spivack’s day-long, “A Practical Guide for Restoring America” seminar is to specify precisely the cancerous federal departments that have to be eliminated.  Except for Defense, there are 1 million federal employees working in these departments. (See below)  More accurately, these federal employees are dependent Democrat Pension patriots wreaking havoc on our country, our economy and our freedoms.   Loren’s chart of the number and cost of Federal Departments is shown below with notes and comments from him and me.

With cancer, you try to cure people by excising ALL OF IT. Remove just a part and, of course, it just continues growing, gets bigger, and eventually it may kill you.

The analogy to our encroaching federal government isn’t far off, I assert.  Unless many of the Federal Departments are just ELIMINATED, with trillions of annual cost, we’ll never, ever get our freedoms back and the federal debt burden off our backs.  Eliminating these destructive federal bureaucracies also eliminates the dependent Democrat employees who will always vote Democrat to save their jobs and their pensions.

So, we – the Tea Party Conservatives – need to find and support candidates who will stand up and declare they will actually CUT THESE CANCEROUS FEDERAL DEPARTMENTS FOREVER.  Loren’s common sense way to do this is to propose the following to those departments slated for extinction:

Our offer – Leave now and we’ll pay your salary and benefits for 2 more years.  Then NOTHING.  Your department won’t exist.  Find a job within two years and you’ll get two paychecks for the overlap.  At least you might work in the private sector and produce something. So after two years, we save our country over $1 trillion annually forever!

Below are some details of this proposal and Barbara Anderson’s column.  Hopefully you’ll find some common ground for action on your part within these articles.

Best,

Len

Len Mead  mead1720@gmail.com

Unwashed Conservative

Obama said it best:  'America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership'
© by Barbara Anderson The Salem News Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure… a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills… that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. …

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally… Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better….

Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion… That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers…

This year, the Federal Government will spend $220 billion on interest. That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program … on education, homeland security, transportation, and veterans benefits combined.

And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.

Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities.

— U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., floor speech on public debt, March 16, 2006

A long quote: I could have rephrased it and offered it as my own analysis, but that would be wrong. I’ll just update it, noting that the debt ceiling was raised over Senator Obama’s objection, and the national debt then increased from $8.6 trillion to $10.7 trillion when President Bush left office, to $14.3 at this point in the Obama presidency, heading for double where it was when Senator Obama so accurately defined the problem.

So having read this far, you understand the situation as well as President Obama once understood it, as libertarians have always understood it, as Republicans always talked as if they understood it, as the Massachusetts Congressional Democrats should finally face it, as the Tea Party clearly understands it and wants us all to face it now with a refusal to raise the debt ceiling again.

Forget being partisan: who can defend another increase in the debt ceiling? All of us are smart enough to understand that this can’t go on. So the only discussion should be on how to run a government without adding more debt. What are the priorities? What should be cut, should taxes be raised?

One thing for sure: we have to pay the debt we owe. This is obvious, and doesn’t require a brand new silly debate about whether the constitution allows the president to raise the debt ceiling without a vote of Congress; no, it doesn’t.

Moving on to a more common debate about raising taxes, and on whom. Though a taxpayer activist devoted to the “no new taxes” pledge, I can understand the argument to raise taxes, not on “the rich” as in un-American class warfare, but on people who can afford to pay more without undue suffering. It is, after all, in their best interest too that the economy survive.

But while this “balanced approach” seems to make sense, it doesn’t work. Raising taxes is the traditional, easy way for politicians to avoid facing essential prioritization and government restructuring. Raise taxes, on anyone, and kiss real solutions goodbye. In the past, according to Americans for Tax Reform, politicians raised $1 in new taxes and spent $1.37, as debt increased.

We should certainly begin the process of tax reform, tax simplification: ending loopholes, subsidies, lobbyist-purchased imbalances, while cutting rates that can be shown to stimulate economic activity and create jobs.

Meanwhile, where to cut? That’s easy. Just continue doing nothing about setting priorities and the decisions will be made automatically, as the money runs out. Then clean up the mess made by politicians who have not faced the problem and those of us who elected them.

Don’t like that plan? Then, the least we can do, short-term, is support the National Taxpayers Union “One Percent Spending Reduction Act” to get us started on real long term solutions. Cut one cent of every dollar spent, each year for six years, then cap spending at 18 percent of GDP in line with annual revenue averages. No exemptions, except interest payments on the national debt.

Get started on long-term solutions with a vote to create a federal balanced budget requirement, with a two-thirds supermajority protection against economy-damaging tax hikes. Redo national healthcare reform, with a rational debate using lessons we’ve learned so far from the ObamaCare and RomneyCare experiments.

Admit we can’t afford to save the world, then keep our returning troops employed on our national borders. Teach our children history, including the 2011 “battle of the budget,” which I’m hoping will have saved them from unendurable debt.

The comments made and opinions expressed in her columns are those of Barbara Anderson
and do not necessarily reflect those of Citizens for Limited Taxation.