The Money Keeps Rolling In – Deficit and Debt Keep Growing

Posted by Tina

Tax revenues continue to roll in to the government at a record pace, a whopping $3.33 trillion. You would think at some point the debt and deficit spending would recede. Instead, our debt is near a record high at $19.98 trillion. Social programs drive much of our growing debt with Medicare topping out at $1 trillion and Social Security closely on it’s heels at $923 billion. Federal Pensions stand at $273 billion. Interest on the debt is at $256 billion. Defense and war account for another $584 billion. That’s a lot of lettuce boys and girls.

CNS News reports on the last quarter of the nations fiscal year:

The U.S. Treasury hauled in a record of approximately $1,084,840,000,000 in tax revenues in the first four months of fiscal 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016 through Jan. 31, 2017), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.

That is up about $5,616,000,000 in constant 2016 dollars from the approximately $1,079,224,000,000 in constant 2016 dollars that the Treasury collected in the first four months of fiscal 2016.

If Americans are serious about bringing the debt down and putting our nation on sound fiscal path we will support downsizing the federal government.

The Congressional Pig Book for 2016, “exposes 123 earmarks in FY 2016, an increase of 17.1 percent from the 105 in FY 2015.” The pricetag? $5.1 billion, nearly the same as the amount we spend on defense of our nation. Pork spending was up 21.4% over 2015.

The various departments of government are bloated bureaucracies that cost the taxpayer year after year and unnecessarily help to drive the debt up. Some departments could be eliminated with power restored to the various states. The Departments of education and transportation are examples. We also have redundency in government. A report in 2013 spells out some of the areas where savings could be found:

Among the 31 areas of duplicative spending, spelled out in a report by the Government Accountability Office obtained by USA TODAY:

• Government agencies are spending billions on new mapping data — without checking whether some other government agency already has maps they could use.

• At least 23 different federal agencies run hundreds of programs to support renewable energy.

• Each branch of the armed services is developing its own camouflage uniforms without sharing them with other services.

Another problem. None of these agencies adequately account for their spending. Each should be subjected to audit and each should be accountable for every penny spent.

Donald Trump vowed to cut the cost of government. He demonstrated his commitment to this end when he negotiated the price of new jets with Lockheed Martin. But the real responsibility falls to Congress. The American people that gave the Republicans control aren’t interested in how difficult it is to create bipartisan legislation to fix this fiscal nightmare. We aren’t interested in excuses and explanations. This is a problem they’ve had decades to correct. Obviously putting it off, so they wouldn’t make constituents mad, was a stupid irresponsible move. Cut the pork, get rid of redundancies, shrink the bureaucratic footprint, and make departments accountable and we will find our way to a workable budget while bringing down debt. How about we start with a simplified tax code. That would make this task easier by ending the necessity for a big bureaucracy at the IRS.

Irresponsible government has squashed a once strong middle class and blunted opportunities for the middle and poor classes to climb the ladder of success. It’s time to pay the piper…time to make government work so the people can thrive.