The number one issue facing America is the repeal of Obamacare. The disastrous effects of this socialist spending law are like a ticking time bomb, set to go off after Obama leaves office. All by itself, it will bankrupt America in the near future. Until it is repealed, Congress should completely defund every aspect of it.
After spending two years pushing Obamacare as the number one issue, now liberal Democrats chide Republicans saying that jobs and the economy are the number one issue. Well, these were and are the number one issue, but Obamacare will only continue to hurt both. The economy and jobs are being hurt by the same problems within Obamacare: higher taxes and exorbitant spending. Since Republicans did get Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts, I want to deal with the other major factor that is killing the economy: exorbitant spending and how Congress can cut it.
The number two issue facing America is exorbitant spending. Since 2007 when the Democrats took control of Congress, the national debt has gone from 8 trillion to 14 trillion dollars—that is a 6 trillion dollar increase in four years. Obama is the biggest spender of all time with almost 5 trillion dollars of that spending coming in just three years.
At the same time, the stock market in 2006 reached a high that was over the 14,000 level, but lost almost half of its value under a Democratic Congress. The market, coming back to the 12,000 level, is not a credit to the Obama economic policies, but to the resilience of our free market system.
Gross National Product levels have also followed a similar trend. Under Democratic control of Congress, the GDP was -4% in third quarter of 2008,-6.8% in fourth quarter of 2008, and -4.9% in first quarter of 2009.[i] Yes, that is a negative decline in GDP in three consecutive quarters! This is a huge decline because the official definition of a depression is a 10% decline in GDP—a negative 6.8% is too close for comfort. The yearly average decline for 2009 was -2.6%, which is the greatest yearly decline since 1946 at the end of WWII.[ii] In other words, Obama and the Democrats have presided over the greatest decline in GDP since the Great Depression! View the chart of the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis for the years 2008-2009, which shows the two worst years since the Great Depression happened under Obama.[iii]
What is real GDP? One of the big faults within the GDP formula is that all government spending is included. 2009 was the year of the stimulus spending bill of almost a trillion dollars—plus the deficit spending of that same year. This makes me wonder: if the government spending figure was taken out, just how great would the decline in GDP actually have been? Exorbitant government spending had actually propped up the GDP numbers—that’s right. To put this bluntly, government spending is hurting the real GDP of the private sector. Until Congress comes clean and forces the BEA to readjust their formula to exclude all government spending, then we (the duped public) will never have a clue to what is actually going on. What is the real GDP? Nobody knows—unless you have five economic degrees and ten detective degrees!
So, let’s leave the land of Oz where the books are juggled to make government look better. Back in the land of reality, exorbitant spending and debt of any kind is not good. In your own personal life, you must balance the checkbook. When your income declines, you do not grab the credit card and max it out. Then when that debt comes due, you do not take out another credit card and max it out. Instead, YOU CUT YOUR SPENDING or get another job and balance the checkbook.
But Congress is addicted to spending. Liberals in Congress for decades have had only two solutions to the problems we face—increase taxes and increase spending. (A third factor is now occurring as the Federal Reserve begins printing money (inflating the money supply) to pay down the debt—if we did that, we would be imprisoned for counterfeiting.) Study what caused the hyperinflation in Germany after WWI and what were the results.[iv]
A practical and realistic solution exists. Government cannot get another job—I wish they would—but they can increase taxes. But at what point do taxes become too much? My belief is simple: if God only needs 10% of our income to run His business, then Congress should never ask for more—unless they believe they are God. Well, local, state, and federal taxes take almost 50% of the average income. Stop the stupidity and decrease taxes across the board!
Along with cutting taxes, another part of the solution is for Congress to cut spending—how novel. Here are some suggestions to help guide Congress make the needed spending cuts:
1. Cut Congressional salaries. Put Congress on a performance pay plan. (See my FED UP article.) Until Congress learns to balance a budget, “we the people” who are sacrificing up to 50% of our incomes demand that Congress cut their pay at least 20%, compounded each year that the budget remains unbalanced.
2. Cut all stupidity spending. Here is just one example: Hundreds of millions of American tax dollars are being used to build and restore Islamic mosques all over the world.[v] How many more examples of stupidity spending can be found? Tens of billions!
3. Cut all funding to the World Monetary Fund. We give tens of billions every year and the fund turns around and gives billions to help support communist causes and dictators all over the world. How do you think Murbarak “retired” as the richest man in the world with over 70 billion dollars? Stop the stupidity!
4. Cut all funding to the United Nations. Again, tens of billions of dollars every year is put into the “peace loving” hand of this organizations—whose majority of members are dictators. Tell the U.N. to simply find another sucker nation and move there: then rent out the rooms as offices and for once make some money.
5. Cut welfare spending. There are legitimate welfare needs. For example: an individual working falls and breaks his/her back and is paralyzed for life. I have no problem with helping those who are truly in need. The Bible says that we are responsible for taking care of the widows and orphans—the poorest and most helpless among us. But the truth of the matter is that often individuals who truly need help cannot get help. Yet, an untold number of welfare cheats get millions of dollars. How can we cleanse the system?
a. Create a path from welfare to workfare to employment. Let every recipient of welfare who is able bodied be given a job—cleaning the trash for 10 miles of road near their home each week. There is a whole host of jobs that the government is now paying someone to do that these people can do. Liberals say that illegal immigrants are only doing the jobs that Americans won’t do; well, let the welfare folks fill these jobs. Also, while they work, demand that they get a college education or a technical education for a real job. Having to work for welfare will “encourage” many of these recipients to get a real job. How many? Probably millions, which will result in billions of dollars being cut from the budget. President Clinton proved that this idea works.
b. Eliminate welfare unwed mothers. Many of the people on welfare are unwed mothers—many of them teenagers. Right now, the government “rewards” such behavior—to the extent that about 50% of all babies are born to unwed mothers. As a Christian, I am deeply offended that I am being forced through taxes to support a lifestyle that I oppose. Stop the stupidity! How can we do this?
i. Find out who the father is and garnish their wages for whatever is the normal amount awarded for child support for each illegitimate child that they have fathered. If they don’t have a job, they can clean the roads too.
ii. Tell the unwed mother that if they have a second child out of wedlock, that they will lose all welfare support.
c. Give the postal workers an incentive of 10% of the fraud that they report. Allow these workers to report any suspected welfare recipient whom they think is receiving multiple welfare checks by using multiple Social Security numbers. Million dollar welfare bums would disappear. If the Supreme Court declares this unconstitutional—which I think they would—then we must amend the Constitution to reward every individual who discovers and reports fraud.
d. Eliminate all welfare/social security checks sent to drug addicts or alcoholics. Help them get free of the addiction and get training for job skills—but limit this to four years during which they will be drug tested. If they fail here, then let them seek help among the many private non-profit organizations who are willing to help them through recovery. Often their success rates are much higher than government-funded organizations. Stop the stupidity.
6. Cut aid to foreign governments. America has given billions to prop up dictatorships—Mubarak. What is our return on investment? We have given billions to help victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Nothing has been done. Where has the money gone? These two examples illustrate two major problems within our foreign policy: first, we invest in senselessness; and secondly, we never demand an accounting. What can we do?
a. First, no foreign aid for any dictatorship. If it is beneficial—as Egypt was—to maintain a peace treaty, then demand that the dictator give an account to Congress for where every dollar is spent and that freedom of religion and speech be guaranteed, or no deal. If we would develop our own oil supplies, then eliminate our support of all dictators with oil.
b. Second, no foreign aid to communist, socialist, or Islamic nations. I will deal with free trade in another issue. Here the issue is simply giving billions of dollars to governments that use that money to build weapons to kill us. Stop the stupidity.
c. Third, aid to governments with parliaments should be carefully scrutinized. Let them give a full accounting of every dollar to Congress—make the record public. The parliament system is the nearest to ours, but not one has a Bill of Rights. Israel and Britain are our greatest friends and deserve our aid.
d. Fourth, there is not one other country with a Constitution and Bill of Rights like ours. Yet, our blood was spilt to free Japan and Germany and Europe. Our blood was spilt to free Iraq and Afghanistan. Why don’t they have a system of government like ours? Why does it always end up being a parliament? Personally, I believe that parliaments are easier to control and manipulate by the ruling elite. My point is that if we invest our blood to free a nation, then we should demand that nation have a Constitution and Bill of Rights just like ours. We gave our best—give them the best government. Stop the stupidity of funding corruption!
7. Cut the budget. Without question, the waste, fraud, abuse, and misused of federal funds reaches into the hundreds of billions of dollars.[vi] Congress and the President can’t even find 100 billion dollars in savings! They’ve got to be kidding us. Here are some suggestions—I don’t claim to be an expert, but a blind man can see stupidity.
a. Cut every department across the board at least 5% to 10% every year until the budget is balanced and the debt paid off. However, departments that can produce and prove a 10% recovery of waste and fraud will not receive a budget cut for that year. Any department administrator who cannot find 5% fraud or waste should receive a 10% cut in his/her pay each year.
b. Eliminate the department of education. I am a teacher and believe that education should be controlled by the state and local boards of education.
c. Eliminate any other department not needed. Do we need a department of energy? As long as we are energy dependent upon foreign oil, this department needs to be cut. Do we need the EPA? As long as they are shutting down millions of farms just to save a snail, then this department needs to be cut. I looked at the government website listing departments and agencies and there were more than a millipede has legs. How many do we really need? There are dozens of different programs in different agencies doing the exact same thing. Should not the duplication be cut? There are dozens that could be turned over to private companies to run—with Congressional oversight.
d. Deal fairly with Social Security/medicare. Millions of people have given (or was it stolen) into these “retirement” funds hoping it would be enough. Now, it looks like immediate recipients may be getting less. Our children are giving but will likely get little to nothing, and our grandchildren will pay and get nothing. That is not fair. I can prove that the government has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from each of us—never believe the lie that in just a few years the Social Security recipient gets back more money than he ever put into the system. Each of us has given hundreds of thousands of dollars that we could have passed on to our children and grandchildren. That is not fair. Yet, if nothing is done, Social Security will go bankrupt and none of us will get anything. There are viable solutions. Personally, I favor some form of privatizing the accounts so that future generations will have a secure retirement. Multimillionaires should not receive Social Security, especially millionaire Congressmen. Check out Congressman Paul Ryan who has a comprehensive plan to balance the budget and deal with these difficult issues.[vii] Lying, lunatic liberals keep saying, “Republicans have not submitted a budget.” Stop the stupidity! Would you call Obama’s plan a budget, or just more of the same exorbitant spending? [viii]
e. Eliminate all earmarks. Bridges to nowhere in Alaska…Tunnels for turtles in Florida...and the beat goes on…with thousands of earmarks attached to every law that passes Congress, there seems to be no end to the trail of red ink pouring from lawmakers. One lawmaker had over a hundred of his own earmarks in one bill before Congress.[ix] Lawmakers have no restraint, so it is up to “we the people” to demand restraint. Just because everyone is doing it is no excuse for the pig-out attitude of Congress. This is a major reason why we should demand that bills be short and single issue. If any merit does exist in a “pet project,” then let all of Congress either vote it up or down. But hiding thousands of pet projects behind a popular bill—tax reform or the budget or defense bills—is the epitome of cowardice. Even more accurately, it is the epitome of deception because Congress does not want the American people to know just how many idiot ideas have been financed by the taxpayers.
f. Don’t know where to start? Congress should contact Citizens Against Government Waste who do a good job of highlighting government waste. Then just start down their list.[x] Ask the Heritage Foundation. They have hundreds of billions of dollars in suggested spending cuts.[xi] For goodness sakes, someone on the President’s team or in the Congressional Budget Committee, please, do a Google search. I did and found dozens of good examples adding up to hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts.[xii] There are many budget watchdog groups who have already done the work. Stop the stupidity and contact one of them—how about all of them.
Real solutions usually have two characteristics: they incentivize; they privatize. Place incentives at every level of government where the employee can get 20 to 50% of the savings that they find and eliminate. Many government agencies like the TSA would be more efficient and effective if they were farmed out to private companies who specialize. The only caveat is that unlike the Federal Reserve, Congress must have strict oversight with 100% public transparency—oh, wasn’t that one of the opaque promises of the president?
[ii] . http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm (On that website, click on the link that says “percent of change from preceding period.”)
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