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Fatal Flaw of Democracies

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Fatal Flaw of Democracies
Pat Buchanan
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

"We just can't afford it!"

Not long ago, every America child heard that, at one time or another, in the home in which he or she was raised.

"We just can't afford it!" It may have been a new car, or two weeks at the beach, or the new flat-panel TV screen.

Every family knew there were times you had to do without. Every father and mother has had to disappoint their kids with those words. Why is it that what parents do many times a year politicians seem incapable of doing: saying no.

How many times in the last decade have the political leaders of either party stood up and declared, "No, we cannot afford this."

Consider. Friday, the White House conceded that the deficits over the next 10 years will total $2 trillion more than they had reported just months ago. Instead of $7.1 trillion, we will run $9 trillion in deficits.

Meanwhile, the White House demands a new entitlement -- health care coverage for 47 million uninsured who can't afford it or refuse to buy it -- that will cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years. Can we afford this -- now?

"We can't afford not to," comes the retort. This is "a core ethical and moral obligation," says Barack Obama.

But is it not a core ethical and moral obligation not to debauch the currency in which most of the hard-earned wealth of the American people is invested? Yet, as Warren Buffett writes in The New York Times, collapse of the dollar and the end of its days as the world's reserve currency is what we are risking.

Government expenditures are running at 185 percent of revenue, which is like the lone family breadwinner earning $50,000 a year, while the family spends $92,500 a year. With families that do that, it is not too long before the credit cards are cut off, the mortgage is called in and the family Chevy is repossessed.

According to those same White House figures, this year's deficit will be closer to $1.6 trillion than the $1.8 trillion previously projected. Now, there are only three basic ways to finance that deficit.

The first is by borrowing the savings of one's own citizens, thus consuming the seed corn of the private economy. The second is by borrowing from abroad. The third is by having the Fed, "through a roundabout process," writes Buffett, "printing money."

Assume the Treasury borrows most of the savings of the American people this year, say, $500 billion. Then Uncle Sam is able to persuade Beijing to buy another $500 billion in Treasury bonds. The Fed must still run the printing presses to create another $600 billion.

How long before our Chinese, Japanese and OPEC creditors conclude that the Americans are depreciating their currency, and dump their U.S. Treasury bonds, or demand a higher rate of interest to cover the risks of their dollar-denominated assets sinking in value?

Can anyone believe the dollar can even retain its present diminished purchasing power if we run $9 trillion in deficits over 10 years? How long before producers conclude the same and start to demand more dollars for their goods -- and inflation takes off?

As Buffett argues, even when the U.S. economy returns to full employment, the new tax revenue it would throw off cannot close a deficit of that size. One must either slash spending or raise taxes to balance a budget where the feds are spending a fourth of gross domestic product.

But how do we cut spending when the five largest items in the budget -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt and national defense -- are untouchables and growing faster then the 3 percent to 4 percent a year a full-employment economy can manage?

Are we going to cut veterans benefits, spending on our crumbling infrastructure or education, when Obama is promising every kid a college degree? Are we going to cut funds for Afghanistan and Iraq, and risk losing both wars? Are we going to cut foreign aid after Hillary Clinton has been touring Africa telling one and all America is here to stay?

How about cutting funds for food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit? Good luck. How about PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts? Just try it.

Does either party have any plan to cut federal spending from today's near 28 percent of GDP to the more traditional 21 percent?

George W. Bush didn't even try, and Obama is making that Great Society Republican president look like Ron Paul.

When a democracy reaches a point where the politicians cannot say no to the people, and both parties are competing for votes by promising even more spending or even lower taxes, or both, the experiment is about over.

"Remember," said John Adams, "democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

http://townhall.com/columnists/PatBuchanan/2009/08/25/fatal_flaw_of_democracies
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
National Suicide
Cal Thomas
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Remember when the deficit was so bad that Democrats said we (or more accurately the Republicans) were placing a terrible burden on our grandchildren?

That was several trillion dollars ago. Democrats now appear perfectly fine with extending the growing deficit and national debt to their great-grandchildren. Perhaps politicians think they will never be held accountable three generations from now because they won't be around to explain to those not yet born why they refused to stop our financial hemorrhaging.

The Obama administration forecast a 10-year budget deficit projection of more than $7.1 trillion, but when confronted with figures from the pesky and bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, the administration was forced this week to raise that projection to approximately $9 trillion. That's $9,000,000,000,000 dollars. For most of us who think a $1,000 deposit in our checking accounts is a large amount and a $1,000 credit card balance is too much, $9 trillion is a figure that is almost beyond comprehension. It is certainly beyond defensible. To borrow a phrase used in another context by the House leadership, it is un-American.

The philosophy of government under both parties can be boiled down to two acronyms: ATM and ASM -- always take more and always spend more.

Who is clamoring for more laws to be passed, more programs to be started and more money to be spent? Let's find him and lock him up for our financial security.

One answer is to be found in a new book by investigative reporter, educator and columnist Martin Gross. Gross summarizes in an easy to read and understandable style how and why government has failed its citizens. The book, to be released Sept. 1, is called "National Suicide: How Washington is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z." In addition to listing some of the more outrageous pork projects that are now well-known to anyone who has been paying attention ($107,000 to study the sex life of the Japanese quail; $150,000 to study the Hatfield-McCoy feud are just two examples on a long list), Gross touches on even bigger and equally outrageous expenditures.

The Alternative Minimum Tax, which he says is "based on an accounting lie," will cost taxpayers $1 trillion over the next 10 years. America, he writes, spends $700 billion a year on various welfare programs, amounting to $65,000 for each poor family of four, yet we still have the poor with us. Both political parties, Gross charges, secretly encourage illegal immigration (the Democrats for votes, the Republicans for cheap labor) and then reward the immigrants' children with automatic U.S. citizenship.

Gross has discovered 1,000 duplicate programs that waste billions. The Bush administration's signature education issue, "No Child Left Behind," has left behind a lot of misspent money: $24 billion per year, according to Gross, even as primary and secondary education "continue to spiral downward."

Medicare and Medicaid waste $150 billion a year dealing with doctor and hospital fraud; $45 billion a year is wasted on "improper" payments and even more on "unnecessary agencies." The Des Moines Federal Home Loan Bank funded research, Gross writes, that found 1,399 government programs handling disappearing rural areas.


If you haven't vented enough this summer at your local town hall meeting, this book will keep your blood pressure up and your motivation to do something about overspending high into the next election. Publisher's Weekly wrote in its review: "A fiery A-Z compendium of government greed, chicanery, and plain incompetence. Gross enjoys a good rant, but his criticism are sound and well-supported."

Gross does more than just list government's sins. He offers a solution on "How to Better Govern America." If ever there was a must-read for people who are sick of the way government operates, this is it.

http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=4d93b0fe-c40d-4e06-8924-b3f2871fc9d7&t=c
 

Steve

Well-known member
file this under what is my least favorite wasteful program..
A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

I wonder how many wasteful projects there really are?

$88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

while at first glance I didn't think this was wasteful... but if you believe the global warming crowd.. why do we need an ice breaker if the ice is melting?
 
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