Posted on 06/15/2019 4:48:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
WASHINGTON - The political battles raging across the federal government seem to be consumed by trade wars, immigration and of course impeachment.
Those issues will run their course in due time, but there is a much bigger problem that seems to be attracting little if any attention here at the highest levels of government.
President Trump rarely mentions it, if at all. Congress, for most of the year, sweeps it under the rug as it goes about its business of recklessly spending other people’s money. Newspapers and the nightly news programs all but ignore it entirely.
We’re talking about wasteful federal spending and an uncontrolled budget that threatens to bankrupt our country.
In fiscal year 2020, the federal budget is forecast to produce a line of deficits totaling $1 trillion a year.
But it gets worse, a lot worse. Go on your laptop and click on “usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit…” and read the ugly truth.
“The federal debt increases each year more than the deficit. For FY 2019 the federal budget estimates that the federal debt will increase by about $1.32 trillion. That’s about $228 billion more than the official ‘deficit.’”
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says that our government’s “Debt is rising unsustainably.”
When the Congressional Budget Office released its longterm budget outlook on June 26, 2018, it projected that “debt held by the public will roughly double as a share of the economy under current law, from 78 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] at the end of 2018 to 152 percent of GDP in 2048 — an unprecedented level.”
But here’s the really, really scary part, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reported:
“Spending Is Growing Faster Than Revenue. CBO projects spending will grow rapidly, from less than 21 percent of GDP in 2018 to over 29 percent by 2048.”
“Revenue will grow slowly, from less than 17 percent of GDP in 2018 to nearly 20 percent of GDP. As a result, annual deficits grow from 3.9 percent of GDP in 2018 to 9.5 percent by 2048, approaching the post-World War II record set in 2009.”
This will lead to much slower growth, reduced incomes, higher interest rates, “and an increased likelihood of a fiscal crisis.”
Even worse, CBO said, major trust funds could be headed toward insolvency, including Social Security, Disability Insurance and Medicare Hospital Insurance, if reforms are not enacted to preserve their finances.
With spending growing faster than revenue, the answer is to slow the growth of federal spending, and that means getting rid of wasteful, ineffective, outdated federal programs.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was a Washington reporter for UPI who was assigned to dig into hundreds of federal spending programs for a series of articles that newspapers across the country gobbled up faster than I could write them.
In 1980, my reporting was turned into a book titled Fat City: How Washington Wastes Your Taxes.
The opening paragraph described my findings: “Our federal government has become a bloated, extravagant, paternalistic, remote, cluttered, disorganized, inefficient, frivolous, duplicative, archaic wasteland.”
I discovered that tens of billions of dollars were lost each year by the government through mismanagement, fraud, abuse, waste, error, theft, and corruption.
There was the Annual Assay Commission that for 187 years met “to do the job it had been faithfully performing since April 2, 1792, even though government officials said it was an agency that no longer performed a useful function.”
There were anti-poverty programs, totaling $30 billion, that did little to help the poor, but that enriched an industry of consultants.
In all, I uncovered more than one hundred “nonessential programs.” Many no longer exist, but have been replaced by other equally wasteful bureaucracies that cry out for the budget-cutters’ axe.
The budget shortfall “has continued to increase under Trump…that will add up to about $1.5 trillion over a decade and a rise in deficit spending,” Bloomberg News reported this week.
It’s enough to make you sick. Is it enough to make us stop?
National debt is immoral because it is a tax on the unborn.
Why not? There is only 11.5 years left...
Eventually it leads to dictatorship when things fall apart.
And we know how the Demonicrats deal with the unborn.
“National debt is immoral because it is a tax on the unborn.”
Social Security is immoral because it is a Ponzi scheme.
In the end, the Government runs all immoral activities.
For everyone else...if you lose, you lose.
Why worry about the big hole in the roof? It’s sunny today!
There is no question it will eventually collapse and when it does it will be beyond ugly. In fact as many on FR have noted there is a wide division already present in America. Americans sadly no longer share a common consensus of basic values. Many have speculated about coming widespread violence and a second civil war. A severe economic crisis or collapse may be the spark to ignite the inferno.
Spending is too high, debt is too high, but the interest that the government pays on its debt is still low.
We have the best economy in the world, and it has room to be a lot better.
My pov, but I think the debt and deficit issues have not been brought up as much under Trump as when Obama was in office. That is part of the problem.
There is no question it will eventually collapse and when it does it will be beyond ugly.
...
People were saying the same thing in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s.
The economy keeps growing and interest rates keep getting lower.
Our politics have become so degraded, Washington so dysfunctional, that we no longer budget, we now stumble from fiscal year to fiscal year on extended resolutions. It is terrible that the debt grows larger, we conservatives recoil from the threat to unborn generations. But it is even worse than the looming reckoning: the onrush of socialism, the new thing that obsesses the Democrat party this cycle, is almost irresistible only because we do not budget, we do not make choices, we do not understand, by way of illustration, that universal healthcare and open borders is an impossibility because we can print money without immediate consequences.
To the public consciousness where there is no scarcity, no trade-off between taxes and socialist programs, no choices made, the appeal to balance a budget falls on stone deaf ears.
When leftists want a new socialist scheme to buy votes, we obligingly print more money. Until that ceases, the socialists have the weather gauge on our electoral destiny because they can always out promise us.
Here is a reply written about a month ago:
When the nation, a business, or a family shirk their responsibility to budget their affairs it generally means there is a moral breakdown somewhere.
The purpose of a budget for the government is to submit to the people's representatives in such a transparent way that the people's representatives' vote on the allocation of resources and the imposition of taxes can be determined up or down by the electorate. When our government proceeds for decades on continuing resolutions, the system breaks down, representative democracy is frustrated, graft and corruption and crony capitalism thrive and deficits accumulate into bankrupting debt.
All of this is made possible by the practice of simply borrowing money without consideration of the long-term costs to society and certainly to the next generation. This power to borrow money is unique to postwar America as the world's superpower and reserve currency. This, coincidence of factors permits our government to print money almost at will, to receive funds by selling bonds to foreign countries because we are the reserve currency and the largest economy, to avoid inflation by the additional coincidence of cheap Chinese goods to import, by cheap foreign or immigrant labor keeping domestic wages down, and thanks to the digital revolution keeping costs overall down.
For the time being, there seem to be no present-day economic consequences to running up a staggering debt of $22 trillion. There are no political consequences for doing so and there will be no political consequences so long as there is no pain. Indeed, the political consequences run the other way because those who complain about overspending tend to lose elections. Those who promised to keep the music playing tend to win elections.
We have a bankrupt, immoral government because we have a bankrupt, immoral citizenry.
Point taken. Capitalist innovation, entrepreneurship, and production have thus far kept ahead of the debt. Innovations such as the silicon chip and the huge industries spawned such has pervasive computers, cell phones, the internet etc, have not only created a huge amount of wealth but immense increases in productivity. Yet if there is a prolonged stall in the capitalist wonder machine, that debt and its consequences will become apparent and crash down on America. You should be alarmed that the Democrats have openly embraced socialism and identity politics. They have a large constituency that loathes the meritocracy which is at the core of capitalist wealth production. The more Democrats, the less wealth producing and innovative capitalism Of course drug use, decadence and hedonism continues to weaken America.
Most conservative are by nature optimistic and hopeful. Yet if history is truly a predictive guide, the glory you describe will not last forever in America. Better to recognize reality than be delusional. Leave the debilitating delusions to the politically correct Democrats.
One thing you will never hear discussed is the cost of illegal immigration or reducing this cost.
t’s all a big battle to who can get to the center of the circle first.
An article written by he Center of Budget and Priorities policies people is a perfect example as they talk about the cuts that would get the budget in line:
“The budget proposes deep cuts in non-defense discretionary (NDD) programs alongside sizeable defense increases, which it would fund through a massive budget gimmick.”
It’s called tough love. And a big part of that are programs like the ACA and welfare programs that were put in place by liberals to trap their constituents.
“The budget would add millions to the ranks of the uninsured by repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and making deep cuts in Medicaid.”
The ACA was already making a huge hole in social security and medicare. And medicaid is nothing more than medicare for medicare, as a secondary insurance.
“The budget would cut assistance that helps struggling families afford the basics, including food and rent.”
TANF stands for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Emphasis on the word temporary here, not permanent. And the economy is booming again, get a job. And if you can’t support a family on your own, why did you marry?
“The budget likely shrinks funding for infrastructure over time.”
Everything costs money. If it can’t support itself, then don’t build it. And aren’t bridges and infrastructure the responsibility of states, not the feds? Governmental welfare for the govenment?
“The budget’s tax cuts and program changes would increase income inequality and widen racial disparities.”
Ahh, that’s the weapon. Pull the race card.
This is part of the reason there is a need for trying to stay up with the needs that were already put in place. A loaf of bread in 1965 was 77 cents. Now over $2 in many places. And whose fault is that?
rwood
Does it matter that some of our citizenry tries to not be immoral? Which country could I move to where all of the citizens, (elites included), are not corrupt?
Most government jobs exit to provide a middle class lifestyle to otherwise unemployable people. They are simply an alternate form of welfare that also serves as riot suppression.
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