Lets see if I have this right. The President wanted to spend $3.7 trillion this year. Our total income for the year is about $2 trillion so that would leave a deficit of $1.7 trillion which will be added to the $14 trillion that is already placed upon the backs of my children and grand children, some not born yet.
Democrats wanted to cut $6 billion from this deficit, and thought that a hefty amount, leaving only $1.64 trillion for my children and grand children to make up latter, raising the national debt to over $15 trillion by years end. Not to be outdone, Republicans in the House and Senate wanted to reduce the budget by $61 billion leaving only $1.09 trillion to borrow from Communist China or elsewhere to be added to the $14 trillion national debt, making it in excess of $15 trillion by the end of this year. Democrats pat themselves on the back for taking a cup of water out of the Pacific Ocean and Republicans gloat when taking a mere bucketful of water from the same ocean.
So the parties went to war over the issue and compromised at $38.5 billion, which still leaves us in excess of $15 trillion in debt by years end. Well-done guys! Your final agreement was about the equivalent of a one-day deficit reduction. I am having difficulty understanding why this wasn’t a sell-out to my children. In fiscal responsibility both parties proved themselves inept.
We have the normal three solutions: tax more, inflate more, and cut more. We could double our taxes but that will destroy our incentive and resources to create jobs. We could inflate the dollar making every dollar already earned worth less. But that will rob those on fixed incomes and seriously damage the lower classes who don’t have the money to purchase gold or silver to ensure the value of what they have saved. Yet the Federal Reserve did just that last December when they, with President Barack Obama’s authorization, began printing and distributing $600 billion, all by June 1, 2011. Or finally, we could cut half the free or subsidized “non-essential” programs and live within our means. That is the most realistic as long as it isn’t “your” program that is cut.
Dare I suggest a fourth solution? The Internal Revenue Service just revealed that 45% of U. S. households paid no federal income tax last year and the year before it was 47% who had not. Are we becoming a two-class society—those who pay taxes and those who do not, with the non-tax payers still receiving generous subsidies from the pockets of those who do? Worse, those who are taxpayers are denied these same benefits their less productive neighbors receive. We all have able-bodied friends who chose not to work. How often do we hear of friends who won’t work because they get enough on unemployment or that they might, in fact, make less by working?
Why should anyone be exempt? Don’t we all use federal services in some way? In fairness shouldn’t we require everyone to pay federal income taxes even if less for the poor? Why do we assume that they should be exempt? Even the widow paid her mite in the New Testament and was subsequently praised (not excused) for having done so by Christ himself.
All “freebie” benefits that the poor received during the preceding year should be added to their salary in this calculation. When they know this up front they may elect to opt-out of the benefit so that it doesn’t put them in a higher tax bracket. When the “poor” pay federal income taxes they are vested in the system and hypothetically more responsible. When they do not then the issue of taxation becomes meaningless to them. “So what if taxes are raised, it does not affect me!”
When the non-taxpayer class (presumably the poor) reach 51% of the population they become the majority class and will never reduce the taxes on the “rich,” which will always be defined as anyone making more than they do. The working tax payer class becomes the new slave class. Eventually when the “rich” are destroyed as a class, as happened in the U.S.S.R. under socialism, all become slaves and poor. With everyone participating in the tax burden, it is harder to gain support for tax raising issues, thus saving billions and the payment of taxes by non-taxpayers, the “poor,” helps reduce the national debt.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College.
The paranoia with respect to a government shutdown is amazing. The hysteria peddlers using this terminology, and the media that purposely play to it, must know these two words emit such an extremist, emotional response. It appears designed to frighten the least informed either for or against the other party, thus the terminology and subsequent blame game.
So what does a government shut down look like? Do the president and vice president resign now that the government ends? No? Does Congress fly out of Washington D. C. the following day and cease to draw their pay, and the Supreme Court cease to deliberate on constitutional questions? Does the army come home and cease to protect us? NO, No, No! Do states, counties, and cities no longer function? No again, they have their own tax base and cops, prisons, and teachers remain in place.
There will never be a government shut down because none of these things will ever happen short of an overthrow of the government from within or a successful invasion from without. So cease the media frenzy and subsequent over-reaction.
How do we know this? Because we had a five-day shutdown between November 14 and November 19, 1995, and a second one of 21 days, between December 16, and January 6, 1996, and none of these things happened. No! Not even one. In fact, the public as a whole didn’t even notice. So what did happen? “The Federal government of the United States put non-essential government workers on furlough and suspended non-essential services…(Wikipedia).” Essentially all went on as before except some paychecks were a few days late. Apparently the federal government does (when forced to do so) know what non-essential services are after all, and is capable of closing them if it has the will.
So at worst a government shutdown is still really only a partial shutdown of non-essential services. So the federal government goes on a long overdue diet and gets back to the basics. This is precisely the Tea Party position (“cut it or shut it”) and the reason they do not fear such. If you have a budget of $3.7 trillion and you have taxes covering only $2 trillion simple math tells you that either you double taxes or cut half of your expenses. You simply can’t keep increasing the national debt, now nearing $14.300 trillion, which has been laid on the backs of our new slaves—our children.
When you have cancer you must surgically remove the infected tissue. Of course it is painful, but the longer you wait the more painful, drastic, and life threatening it becomes. Most of the programs cut in both shutdowns, were not areas of clear constitutional authority as defined in Article I, Section 8, so in time such cuts should become permanent cuts or be subjected to the amending process for appropriate authority.
Usually diets have some benefits in and of themselves. In the case of the federal government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, both parties benefited: Democrats, under President Bill Clinton, because thereafter he was credited with “the first four consecutive balanced budgets since the 1920’s” and Republicans because they retained control of both houses of Congress largely because of the popularity of their hard line on the budget (Wikipedia).
So a government shutdown is really only a partial shutdown that may actually be healthy. Lets call it such in the future so that we don’t frighten the less informed?
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College.
We are presently over 14 trillion dollars in debt, three trillion of which was incurred the last two years under President Barack Obama. So what is a trillion dollars? Let me try to give some perspective. To begin with a trillion is the number 1 followed by twelve zeros. A trillion dollars is a thousand billion and a billion is a thousand million. This still means very little to my students who count their money in fives, tens and twenties.
One mathematician gave us a more practical way to evaluate our outstanding debt. One trillion one-dollar bills stacked atop each other (not end to end but flat) would reach nearly 68,000 miles into space—a third of the way to the moon. If so, the debt incurred under President Obama alone would take us to the moon. Moreover, if you like traveling atop this stack of ones, you could return to earth for yet another three trillion dollars which is six trillion dollars. You could repeat your visit to and from the moon for yet another six trillion, making 12 trillion total. We have two trillion in debt remaining, just enough to get us two-thirds of the way to the moon again (See CNN News Cast, Feb. 4, 2009).
Senator Mitch McConnell gave another illustration just as awe striking. He calculated that if we spent a million dollars every day since Jesus was born we still would not have spent a trillion dollars—only three-fourths of a trillion dollars. We would have 13 1/4 trillion left.
Someone else equated our national debt to seconds and concluded that a million seconds is about 11 ½ days and a billion seconds is about 32 years. A trillion seconds is about 32,000 years thus 14 trillion seconds is 448,000 years (See CNN News Cast, Feb. 4, 2009). This is not helpful and only makes my head spin. My Ph. D is not in math.
I ask my students, “Who gets to go without so that this debt can be paid?” Go without?” That is a concept foreign to this generation!! They do not know and neither do their parents and grandparents who laid it on their backs. When they are told that their immediate share of the debt is $127,529 (see USDebtClock.org) due immediately, they are angry. The 13th amendment ending slavery has been rescinded. The past generation wanted nice costly programs for free and were willing to sell their children in order to drive new Cadillac’s now. Well, the Cadillac’s are in the auto wrecking yards, Communist China owns a tenth of us and the bills are due. What is worse the older generation is still anxious to incur even more debt on our defenseless children and grandchildren. Are we the most debt addicted, insensitive generation in all human history?
But there is hope. When you go bankrupt in your personal life you are expected to sell everything that you own to get out of debt. The nation has one asset left that could probably vaporize this national debt and do so in one generation but I am reluctant to bring attention to it until we have learned the lesson that we cannot spend beyond our means without someone paying for it latter. Unfortunately, neither party is fully there yet. Sell government land. Most are surprised to learn that the federal government unconstitutionally owns a third of the landmass of the United States. The Constitution limits the amount of land that the federal government can have to 10 square miles for a capital and land acquired through the limits of the Constitution for military purposes.
Over the decades the federal government withheld the land that went with statehood in the West. New states were so anxious to gain statehood that they overlooked the omission. According to public land statistics Alaska owns only 1 ½ % of itself. Arizona 56% of itself, California 52 ½ % of itself, Idaho 36% of itself, Nevada, a mere 12% of itself, and Utah 36 ½ % of itself. We, of course, would have to restrict foreign countries and perhaps place a limit on individual takes, but the idea would be to spend every penny derived from the sales to liquidating our 14 trillion dollars of debt.
On September 19, 1796, just prior to leaving the presidency, President George Washington issued his famous Farewell Address. He said that he offered his advice as the “warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel.”
In his usual stately manner, as the father of this great nation, he warned posterity of possible pitfalls that could undermine or destroy liberty. His warnings may well be even timelier today as we commemorate his birthday.
In strong terms he cautioned us to avoid debt. He said: “As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit … use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense … [Use the] time of peace, to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”
Today our national debt exceeds 14 trillion—the highest in our history—three trillion of which has come about in the last two years. This is about $127,700 for every taxpayer in America growing at $171 per week (See USDebtClock.org). The President’s 3.73 trillion dollar new budget, 2 trillion of which will be passed on to posterity, does not suggest that we are following this wisdom.
Washington pleaded with the nation to keep religion and morality strong. He said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.… Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? … Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
The Founding Fathers never supported the notion of separation of religion and government—only the separation of an organization of religion from government. What would Washington say of the immorality that prevails today?
His warning about foreign aid was especially good. He basically told us that gift giving in foreign affairs is a good way to be universally hated. He said it placed us “in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more.” Today there is hardly a nation in the world, dictators and tyrants alike, that does not have its hand out, and when the amount is reduced or terminated we are hated all the more for it.
He warned against the origin of “combinations and associations” whose intent was to suppress the desires of the majority in favor of that of the minority. He called them artificial power factions. We call them special interest groups. Such factions, he said, “may answer popular ends and become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.…” The antidote for this, Washington explained, was “to resist with care the spirit of innovation” upon basic constitutional principles or premises no matter how flowery, appealing or “specious the pretext.”
Washington worried about posterity not holding their elected officials strictly to the limits imposed by the Constitution. He knew many would seek to undermine that document by twisting it to give power they could not acquire without the distortion. He said: “But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Today much of what the federal government does is not even mentioned in the Constitution.
But patriots are not likely to be popular. “Real patriots,” he said, “who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.”
Our practices are largely the opposite of what George Washington advised. No wonder we have all the problems he predicted and are losing our freedom.
I do not usually write satire but here is a scary proposition that could come true as witnessed by other extreme laws recently passed. The country is now 13½ trillion dollars in debt and it is incorrectly believed, by the less informed—mostly socialists—that the only way to solve this problem is to increase taxes.
Congress recently discovered how unfair Christmas really is as some get more presents than others. To correct this injustice a 1,500 page law called the Christmas Equalization Act is working it’s way through judiciary committees in both the House and Senate and will be on the floor of both houses very soon. Members are not likely to read it, as on other long-winded laws, but they are likely to pass a conceptual document instead from which lawyers spin the actual words—now an all too common practice.
Under the new law, to begin next year, shoppers buying for loved-ones are required to identify receivers at check out for each gift and it’s amount. Retail stores are to then fill out form13,208, The Affidavit of Christmas Gifts, passing that information to the IRS for national list tabulation.
The total allotment per Christmas per person is 20 gifts. Totals exceeding this number in intervals of 10 will be assessed a gradual value added tax up to 70% of the value of the gifts in excess. This amount will be given to those suffering from Christmas Depravation Syndrome, recently discovered by psychologists to inhibit the development of ambition and drive. Overall value is also taxed if exceeding a total of $200 beginning at 25% and at $50.00 increments ending at 100% for any total exceeding $400.00 dollars. This information is submitted on The Affidavit of Excess Christmas Value (Form 13,209). If you have problems following these formulas so do the lawyers who made them up but it does help ensure full employment for them for decades to come sorting it out.
Those applying for benefits could do so in the same place and same way they get food stamps or any other benefits. One idea receiving strong support is to turn it over instead to ACORN or some other reputable organization already in existence.
The more likely option, however, is to create a whole new department, as the necessary monitoring would require at least 15,000 new federal agents to oversee. It certainly would create much needed employment, which would stimulate the economy. Recipients, however, would have to fill out another simple10 page form called the Underprivileged Christmas Affidavit (Form 13,210) which also allows participants to identify favorite gifts. Recipients would not be limited to 20 gifts as it is certain that they have been “gift deprived” for some time, nor would they have a total value limit placed upon them for the same reason.
The excess taxes are thought to be sufficient for funding the under-gifted, but critics are skeptical about it’s ability to fund the 15,000 federal agents as well. Some say that gift givers will lower the number to the 20 gifts thus avoiding the excess tax altogether, leaving the taxpayer to fund both the “under gifted” and the agents thus, increasing the national debt. Proponents say that such is just uncompassionate right-wing extremist talk.
Other legislation on the table is to tax excessive tree length, Christmas decorations, and turkey size. There are so many injustices to alleviate. Some few have even suggested making the holiday illegal. Lawmakers hope to expand the legislation to Hanukkah next year for the same reasons.
Merry Christmas, my liberty loving friends.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College.
By mid 2008 almost everybody knew that we were in deep financial trouble. But the forces that brought it about actually began decades ago with The Community Reinvestment Act in 1977. This legislation “forced lending institutions to grant mortgages to people whose income, credit histories, and net worth would previously have disqualified them from getting such loans.”
An old adage suggests that in getting a loan from a bank the recipient must first prove that he does not need one by listing his assets. The bank uses this list to retrieve all or a portion of what is owed should the recipient default on the loan. The less invested or potentially lost the easier it is for the recipient to walk or default. Such is long standing wisdom and favors the more industrious individuals, as it should. What this means in real life is that high crime or impoverished areas of town do not attract investors as readily.
Socialists (share the wealth advocates) saw a race connection, thus injustice, when it was realized that “only 72 percent of minority applicants were approved for mortgages, versus 89 percent of white applicants.” Moral outrage followed which was resolved by legislation ”forcing lending institutions to loan money to people they would otherwise not lend to and in places where they would otherwise not put their money” (“Government Bailout,” The New American, Sept. 29, 2008, pp.11-15). This forced banks “to engage in far-riskier lending practices or receive a failing CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) grade. To avoid an ‘F’ from the CRA, which could jeopardize their viability, the banks were pressured to direct hundreds of billions of dollars in high-risk mortgages to inner-city and low-income neighborhoods. Moreover, under CRA pressure, banks would ‘hire’ radical, non-profit groups like ACORN to find them customers.”
Banks too benefited as the government organizations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would buy these poor-quality loans, now referred to as “sub-prime” loans and take them off the banks’ books (Human Events, Oct. 13, 2008, p 8). It seemed good for everyone. I watched in horror as “kids” with little or no credit purchased homes well above their means and home prices doubled in a “fake-value” bubble. There seemed no consequence for risky behavior.
Please note: these faulty loans were brought about by government intervention and regulation, not the free market.
If a person has not repaid previous loans what is the probability that he will repay a new loan? Should exceptions be made for individuals who are non-white? Race should have nothing to do with lending. But banks insisted on giving loans anyway to meet new government race-based quotas. Politicians were loved because they had helped some live beyond their means with zero down loans. Key politicians received healthy contributions from the two government entities that kept them from exercising sufficient scrutiny over the process.
When the defaults inevitably began, investors purchasing the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “sub-prime” bundles quickly became leery of them and stock in these two government entities plummeted in late 2008. Congress responded with The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 which raised the federal debt limit to $800 billion. The two organizations were considered to be too big to fail. Unfortunately the housing bailout did not restore confidence and property values continued plummeting at somewhere near the foreclosure rate, plus the national debt skyrocketed.
Now getting a loan for everyone is very difficult. Old businesses are retracting (laying off) to survive. Regular businesses cannot expand (hire) without growth capital. New businesses cannot be created without someone’s risk capital. Those able to risk will not do so until the storm passes and the storm is going to be with us for a while. Thanks, Congress. You flunked Economics 101.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College.
