These budgets were put in place by a Democratic President working with a Democratic Congress. President Obama isn't on the ballot this election, but Democrats in Congress are. I ask my Congressman, a Democrat named Gary Peters, what were you thinking about when you saw that tax receipts were declining and debt was piling up and everywhere else people were cutting back- did you think that now was the time to double-down on generous welfare payments, now was the time to ask for no accountability, now was the time to freely dole out money that you are taking from my grandchildren, that now was the time to tell people that everything was going to be taken care of by the government?
Mr. Peters, when you saw all these people on unemployment, why did you fight so hard to keep them on unemployment and keep giving them more and more money, money that our government borrows from China so that my children can pay it back with interest some day, while at the same time attacking job creators with massive increases in taxes and regulations? Mr. Peters, why do you vote in favor of cap-and-trade and Obamacare, two pieces of legislation that make it more difficult for businesses to operate and stay profitable, when you know that the legislation you support is going to make more people lose their jobs, and then you vote to keep them unemployed for as long as possible? You pretend to care about our nation, but all you do is vote to give others people money to those people who don't work, and then you pretend that you don't understand why your actions are turning our recession into a depression.
The above chart is from the Wall Street Review. Their comments on it were (in part):
Spending rolled in for the year that ended September 30 at $3.45 trillion, second only to 2009's $3.52 trillion in the record books. But don't think this means Washington was relatively less spendthrift. CBO reports that the modest overall spending decline results from three one-time events.
The costs of TARP declined by $262 billion from 2009 as banks repaid their bailout cash, payments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were $51 billion lower (though still a $40 billion net loser for the taxpayer), and deposit insurance payments fell by $55 billion year over year. "Excluding those three programs, spending rose by about 9 percent in 2010, somewhat faster than in recent years," CBO says.
Somewhat faster. You've got to laugh, or cry, when a 9% annual increase qualifies as only "somewhat faster" than normal. What did Washington spend more money on? Well, despite two wars, defense spending rose by 4.7% to $667 billion, down from an annual average increase of 8% from 2005 to 2009.
Once again domestic accounts far and away led the increases. Medicaid rose by 8.7%, and unemployment benefits by an astonishing 34.3%—to $160 billion. The costs of jobless insurance have tripled in two years. CBO adds that if you take out the savings for deposit insurance, funding for all "other activities" of government—education, transportation, foreign aid, housing, and so on—rose by 13% in 2010.
As for the deficits, the 2010 total was $1.29 trillion, down slightly from $1.42 trillion. That's a two-year total of $2.7 trillion, or more than the entire amount during the Reagan Administration, when deficits were supposed to be ruinous. Now liberal economists tell us that deficits are the key to restoring prosperity. But all we have to show for spending nearly 25% of GDP for two years running is a growth rate of 1.7% and 9.6% unemployment.
Those slow growth numbers have contributed to the deficits by yielding paltry tax revenues. Individual income tax receipts fell again in 2010, by 1.6% to $901 billion. As recently as 2008, individual income tax revenues were $1.15 trillion. Corporate tax revenue climbed a healthy 38.6% to $192 billion, but that's still well below the $304 billion of 2008. This only underscores how much deficit reduction depends on a growth revival.
Here's the kicker: By far the biggest percentage-gain revenue winner for the taxpayer in 2010 was . . . the Federal Reserve. Thanks to the expansion of its balance sheet with riskier assets, the Fed earned $76 billion during the year, a 121% increase. The Fed's windfall is a perfect symbol of our current economic policy. The government is making money because it now controls so much capital, but it is robbing that money from the private economy in the process. It is never a good sign when your central bank is a national profit center.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar