By Harold Pease, Ph. D.
As a nation under the U.S. Constitution we are 236 years old. The first 124 of these years we had no federal income tax and handled our national expenses quite well, most of those years without a national debt. Today most are assessed a fifth to a fourth of their gross income. Prior to 1913 we kept what is now taken from us. We first advocated a return to this system on Dec. 13 2013,“Blows to Liberty 100 Years Ago Still Impact You” (LibertyUnderFire.org).
What would you spend it on were it not taken from you? Normally not on the basics such as food, housing, and utilities as they likely are covered in what you are allowed to retain. You would spend the extra fourth of your salary on hundreds of items that are made by others as well as services you might like. This not only would enrich your life but it would provide jobs for others making those items or providing those services.
Would you spend it more wisely than the federal government? Likely! Most of the money taken from you by the federal government is spent on perpetual war, foreign aid, grants to privileged portions of our society, and endless unconstitutional subsidized programs; the last two of which basically take the money of those who produce and redistribute it to those who do not. Even some non-tax payers get income tax refunds as we have reported—so corrupt is the system.
Of course, those receiving and benefiting from these programs will defend them. But the fact remains that tax monies provide largely government jobs, which are almost entirely consumption jobs (jobs that consume the production of society but produce little consumable). Such jobs cannot produce for public consumption a potato, a carton of milk, or even a can of hair spray. They bring another person to the table to eat, but not another to produce something to eat.
What largely brought about the vast give-away programs of the Twentieth Century was the now 112-year-old 16th Amendment—the federal income tax. All three 1912 presidential candidates Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, their respective parties, and the then existing Deep State, then called Internationalist, did this to us. They wanted this financial “water faucet” that they could turn on at will. They could purchase anything—even people.
Prior to 1913 the federal government remained mostly faithful to her grants of power in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which left them with only four powers: 1) to tax, 2) pay the debts, 3) provide for the general welfare and 4) provide for the common defense. Because the federal government has the inclination to grow their authority the last two power grants, general welfare and common defense, each had eight qualifiers to harness them more fully. Outside these qualifiers the federal government had no power to tax or spend—still doesn’t.
General welfare then meant everyone equally (general) as opposed to “specific welfare” or “privileged welfare” as it is today, targeting those to forfeit and those to receive monies. The Constitution did not deny states, counties, or cities from having such programs, only the federal government. But politicians soon learned that the more they promised to the people, from the money of others, the easier it was to get elected and stay elected.
The problem with the federal government going off the list and funding things clearly not on it was that each time they did so the stronger the inclination to do so again. One minor departure begets another until one notices that what the federal government does has little or no relationship to the list in the Constitution. I ask my students what would happen if they took one lollypop to kindergarten and gave it to one child? What would the others say? Where is mine? Try taking away long provided benefits from a privileged welfare group, as for example food stamps, and see how popular you are with that voting group in the next election.
So why does the government now need a fourth of everything you make and it is still not enough? Answer, because we went off the listed powers of the Constitution and every departure required more taxpayer funding. The solution to less tax is less government. A side benefit is more freedom. The productive classes would not be hurt as might be supposed. Seldom do they qualify for the federally subsidized programs anyway. The fourth taken from the productive classes would be spent by them creating a plethora of jobs for those who wished to work and give them no excuse not to. The cycle of dependency would be drastically reduced. The federal government would no longer be an enabler to those not working. States would decide for themselves what assistance programs they could afford and generate with some states offering more and others less as the Tenth Amendment mandates.
I have a friend who freely admits that he became a Democrat as a young man because they offered more. His departure from the Constitution began with that choice. The Democrat Party since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has always offered more freebies, confiscated from the “haves” and redistributed to the “have nots” to paraphrase Karl Marx and his socialist ideology.
So, how did we cover the expenses of the federal government—even wars—our first 124 years? Products coming into the country were assessed a fee to market in the U.S. called a tariff. We got product producers in other countries to cover our national expenses and thus we were able to spend on ourselves every cent of what the federal government now takes, which inadvertently stimulated the economy. No one should be able to argue that our present approximately $36 trillion national debt (up from $20 trillion just 8 years ago) is fair, has really worked for any of us, and is a better plan. It also enslaves our posterity who is required to pay it back amplified with interest charges, enabling us to bask in the sunshine of fake prosperity. Imagine what you could purchase annually with the money confiscated from you in federal taxes.
To protect prosperity and the Constitution for all, three things must happen. 1) We must identify and remove all waste and fraud in the present government identified by DOGE with ALL excess money from cancelled contracts to immediately be returned to liquidate the national debt. 2) We must remove the 16th Amendment and restore the tariff as our source of financing the federal government as it was our first 124 years. 3) We must return to Article I, Section 8 and the listed powers of government with ALL expenditures specifically tied to one of those powers. Yes this will hurt for a time, all surgeries do, otherwise we eventually self destruct as a free people.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution and a syndicated columnist. Read his weekly columns at www.LibertyUnderFire.org Column # 817
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