WHY THE BUDGET WILL NEVER BE CUT

Tax reform, Social Security reform, budget deficits, tax cuts....all the talk in the media these days about spending money in Washington essentially comes back to one thing: the federal budget of the United States. President Bush proposed his about two months ago. It h was a spending blueprint for Fiscal Year 2006, that runs between October 2005 and September 2006. The proposed budget was for $2.57 trillion. If you're unfamiliar with what a trillion dollars is, think of it this way: $2,570 Billion, or roughly 100 times the net worth of Bill Gates. That's a lot of money ... more than most people make in their lifetime.

And yet, with the United States over $500 billion in the hole this year alone, it has become impossible to cut the budget ... one even by one-half of one percent! Dishonest liberals, propped up by the mainstream media, decry the "cuts" in the budget. Actually, there weren't really aren't any true cuts in the budget. Most of the proposed cuts were actually cuts in the projected growth of spending. Right now, Democrats are whining about whether or not to make George Bush's tax cuts permanent. We're told of the "cost" of being allowed to keep more of our money. Think about that for a minute. Imagine somebody mugs you on the street and steals your wallet....and when you ask for it back, the robber tells you he can't afford it. There! You got it!

Right now nearly half the budget goes to the Gimme Generation, in the form of Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements. These items are set to grow at a rate set by law -- they will never be cut. All these supposed "cuts" we hear about are window dressing. And every beneficiary of the federal largess has a lobby, and that lobby gets media coverage.

Right now Republicans in the Senate are getting weak-kneed about making the tax cuts permanent. Allowing you to keep more of your money is the only way to slow the rate in the growth of government. It will never cut back itself. Ever.

OK .. it's not exactly something we worry about here in the United States. How many of your friends have dealt with a case of Malaria in the past few years? It's just not on our radar screens. The number of cases of Malaria in Africa is at an all-time high. There is also a rather large increase in cases of Malaria in Eastern Europe. Do you know that at one time Malaria had almost been eliminated around the world? Now it has returned as one of the biggest killing machines in Africa. Why? Well ... here I go picking on the eco-whacko crowd again .. the environmentalists. In this case they deserve it, big time.

Here's a science quiz for you. What chemical compound has saved more human lives than any other chemical compound in history. The answer is dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. (Can you believe it? That word got by my spell checker!!!) Most of you know this stuff by its shorter name. DDT.

Most of you don't realize it, but there is a book out there that some people call the beginning of the environmental movement. That book was "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson. The book was a screed against the use of DDT. Though that book has now been largely debunked, it led to the head of the EPA banning the use of DDT. At this point the worldwide effect of the U.S. ban has been millions of preventable deaths.

Yesterday I told you of the role of the environmental movement in the cost of the gasoline you'll be putting into your car this summer. That $2.25 your paying for petrol is nothing compared to the millions the eco-whackos have killed through the DDT ban.

Here is something I wrote a year ago, back when Bush was proposing a 2005 budget or $2.4 trillion:

According to Forbes Magazine, in 2003 there were 244 billionaires in the United States (down from 298 in 2000), and the total aggregated wealth of the 400 richest Americans was $955 billion (down from $1.2 trillion in 2000).

Now consider that for 2005, George W. Bush has proposed a federal budget of $2.4 trillion dollars, which is equivalent to approximately $8,700 for every man, woman and child living in America, and which will result in a spending rate of around $275 million per hour, 24-hours a day every day.

Bush’s proposed budget is so large that if our federal representatives taxed away 100% of every single dollar owned by the 400 richest Americans – an amount equal to 8% of America’s entire $11 trillion Gross Domestic Product in 2003 -- that scheme would generate only enough money to run the government for less than 5 months.

Bill Gates’ entire $43 billion fortune would be spent in just under a week.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.