Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.
President Ronald Reagan
The foregoing discusses the fact that we have many government organizations that were not planned by our founding fathers and were not part of our Constitution. Does that mean they were bad? The answer is clearly, yes.
In fact, it would not be wrong to say that all of our present problems are because we have left the Constitution. The departments and agencies being reviewed are not authorized by our Constitution, The EPA led by environmental bureaucrats has destroyed towns, led to huge law suit costs, interfered with construction of hospitals and dams, and added significantly to the costs of businesses in their normal activities. Our Congress has passed laws and funded departments that have stopped the development of our resources. The bureaucrats in our Energy Department have issued rules which have made it more difficult to construct nuclear power plants and oil refineries and the bureaucrats in our Department of the Interior have stopped normal logging and prevented the clearing of fo rests which has led to forest fires. The Department of the Interior has placed a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf incurred a “contempt of court” for not removing moratorium.
The bureaucrats in the Department of Housing and Urban Development have built and then destroyed housing developments and added to our costs. In 1999 HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo established new Affordable Housing Goals requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and they too are not constitutional) to buy $2.4 trillion mortgages in the next ten years He also raised the rule from buying 42% of mortgages from low and moderate income families to 50% in 2001. With that kind of rule it is no wonder that so many failed to pay their mortgages. (After investigation by our Congress they determined that the main cause of the housing collapse was Wall Street and ignored the part played by HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and our Congress. Naturally, when the government investigates the government they can never find the government at fault).
The bureaucrats in the Internal Revenue Service ( which is constitutional because of the 16th amendment which changed what our founding fathers had created) have developed a system for identifying and collecting taxes that no one (including them) knows or understands the rules they have issued.
We have had presidents that have ignored our Constitution and started wars. We have had presidents that issued executive orders that usurped the constitutional powers of Congress to pass legislation and presidents that established their own organizations and appointed people to positions that were not approved by our Congress as is required by the Constitution.
We have two health care (Medicare and Medicaid) systems that are unconstitutional scheduled to go bankrupt in the near future and they now are incorporated into Obamacare which is even worse. We have a retirement program ( Social Security, that is also unconstitutional) that is also already in the red and on the brink of failure. The list of mistakes could go on and on but that should be enough to indicate that our founding fathers were correct in creating a Constitution that prevented all of this.
Would it be possible to transfer all of these organizations to the states where they could be better regulated? In every case the states have these organizations and in fact most of them are administered at the state level. In the case of those departments that legislate (EPA and Energy), their rules and regulations could be adopted by the states IF they wanted to or dropped if desired. In the case of those departments that transfer money (Education, Agriculture, Medicare and Medicaid) those functions are being performed at the state level and there is little need for them at the Federal level. That should save a tremendous amount of money since the average pay for federal workers is $71,000 per year (planned to go to $75,000 next year) and about $94,000per year in Washington D. C. and about $40,000 for average workers. These department that transfer money do not perform any functions other than shifting money.
They don‟t contribute anything to our Gross National Product and are really a drain on our economy.
Let‟s get rid of them at the national level and let the states do this work.
Has all of this led us to a point where our very nation is endangered? Let‟s look at our financial situation.
During the Bush (3) administration our debt nearly doubled (from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2001 to $10.0 trillion at the end of 2008) which we thought was terrible. Under Obama the debt in 2009 went to $11.9 trillion and the budget for 2010 will increase the debt to $14.3 trillion and is now projected to double again in two years and Obama has projected that the deficit will be $20 trillion in 2020.
That is unlikely for the American people are now aware of what is happening andwe now know that the Democrats will not be in control of Congress and that we will have a different president elected in 2012.
Fortunately, it is the Congress that controls the spending for the budget presented by Obama is only a recommendation. The debt ceiling has been raised to $16.3 trillion by the Democrat Congress and they seem quite capable of spending $ 3.8 trillion which is budgeted for 2011 to reach that goal. Interest costs are projected to be around $600 billion by 2016 and credit agencies are threatening to reduce our rating from AAA to AA ( Standard and Poor‟s has assigned a negative rating to the U.S. A.) and that could lead to a higher interest rate for us. At our debt level, if we had to refinance our debt at one percent higher rate we would add $141 billion to our already huge interest payment. Obama has stated that what we are doing is unsustainable but we are continuing to sustain that unsustainable spending.
Is it possible that we could balance the budget and make a start toward correcting this problem. A recent attempt in the Senate to consolidate 640 programs and save $120 billion was defeated 57 to 43. Even though earmarks do not add huge amounts to our debt it would still be a nice gesture to stop those expenditures but that has not happened. (And in spite of Obama‟s statement that he would veto any bill containing earmarks he has not done so).
Here are some examples of Washington expenditures. Annually we spend $92 billion on corporate welfare. There were $72 billion payment errors in 2008 (Our federal government is really too big).
Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant properties (let‟s transfer all of these properties to the states). Government auditors spent the last five years examining all federal programs and found evidence that only 22% of them (cost $123 billion) help the populations they serve.
Government auditors examining wasteful programs counted 342 economic development programs, 130
programs serving the disabled and 130 programs serving at risk youth.
Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.
The Securities and Exchange Commission spent $3.9 million rearranging desks and offices. Healthcare fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers $60 to 100 billion annually. The refusal of many federal employees to fly coach costs $146 million annually in flight upgrades. The University of Chicago‟s college of Nursing received a $3 million grant to identify risk factors for excessive drinking among lesbians. The National health Institute spent $783 million to pay malt liquor and marijuana users to keep a daily record of their substance abuse habits. Washington spent $126 million in 2009 to enhance the Kennedy family legacy in Massachusetts and Sen. John Kerry diverted $20 million from the 2010 defense budget to subsidize a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute. The federal government owns more than 50,000 vacant homes (we should transfer ownership to the states).
The Federal Communications Commission spent $350 000 to sponsor NASCAR driver David Guilliland. Taxpayers are funding paintings of high-ranking government officials at a cost of up to $50,000 a piece. Last years 10,160 earmarks included $200,000 for a tattoo-removal program in Mission Hills, CA, $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Center in Cody, WY and $75,000 for the Totally Green Zone in Albany, GA.
Is there any doubt that that list could be doubled and added to? Is it possible that our federal government is so big that it is out of control and can not be managed? Should many of the responsibilities of that government be transferred to the states?
The Democrats seem to believe that we can spend our way out of the recession which is so ridiculous that it defies being classified. Is it stupid or treasonous?
Tax increases can not possibly make these problems go away. Especially now a tax increase would be exceedingly harmful. Something must be done to reduce expenses. That something is not just cutting some costs. To achieve what must be done we will have to completely remove some of these unconstitutional functions and departments from our government and do something to limit and control our presidents