Posts Tagged ‘federal budget deficits’

No tax increases either. Just tax and spending cuts. Scale back the entire Federal government to Constitutional size, in accordance with the Tenth Amendment.

House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP leadership in Congress are doing a decent job by insisting on no new taxes. They want spending cuts only in exchange for agreeing to raise the federal debt ceiling.

But House Republicans should not agree to raise the debt ceiling at all, period.

It’s not a debt ceiling if Congress keeps raising it.

The federal debt is now nearly $15 TRILLION. The federal government borrows 40 cents out of every dollar it spends.

Can you imagine what would happen to you, your home and your family if you were borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar you spend — year after year, decade after decade?

Once you’ve maxed out your credit cards, do you get to just raise your debt ceiling?

You should not be living off your credit cards to begin with, but that’s another topic.

When your expenses exceed your income, you have no choice but to scale back your expenses — sometimes way back, quickly.

Not raising the debt ceiling would force Obama to agree to cut programs and eliminate entire government agencies.

The federal government brings in enough tax revenue to pay for interest on the debt. So there’s really no need to default on the debt.

But the federal government does not bring in enough tax revenue to pay interest on the debt plus everything else it’s paying for. Real cuts would have to happen — massive cuts.

We’d have to raise the age for receiving Social Security to 70. We could certainly live with that. We’d have to do the same with Medicare — no Medicare until you’re 70.

We’d have to adopt the Paul Ryan Medicare plan — gradually wean ourselves off it.

We’d have to get rid of ObamaCare (which wouldn’t be the least bit painful; it would be wonderful).

We’d have to not hire those 15,000 new IRS agents needed to enforce ObamaCare. We’d have to cancel the building of 159 brand new government agencies required to administer ObamaCare.

We’d have to eliminate useless federal agencies such as the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, Labor and HUD.

We’d have to cut the military budget.

Why are we now spending twice what we were spending at the peak of the Cold War on the military?

We can’t afford to spend $700 billion on this any more. Bin Laden’s dead. It’s time to start scaling back our military commitments.

What would be the consequence of not raising the debt ceiling?

There would certainly be pain.

The stock market would likely drop 1,000 points in the short-term. A lot of government workers would lose their jobs and, gulp, have to get jobs in the private sector (where results and productivity are expected).

Anytime you enforce discipline, it hurts.

Dieting is no fun.  Do you know anyone who loves to diet?

It’s unpleasant to say: “Honey, we just can’t afford that vacation we were planning.”

Discipline and restraint are never fun.

But the alternative is we keep going down the current road to serfdom and ruin.

The time is now to start reducing debt without tax increases, with spending cuts only.

We could do that simply by going back to 2008 spending levels.

Why can’t we go back to 1998 spending levels?

I don’t remember that as being so disastrous. In fact, the country was doing just fine.

Better yet, let’s go back to Constitutional spending levels. If our federal government actually followed the Constitution, it would be about a third the size it is now.

Most of what our federal government does today is unconstitutional.

The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states as follows:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

James Madison, the father of our Constitution (who wrote most of the Constitution), actually thought adding the Tenth Amendment was unnecessary because the entire Constitution is about limiting and defining the precise responsibilities of the federal government.

The Tenth Amendment, Madison thought, would be duplicative. As Madison put it:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 45

But America’s other Founding Fathers wanted to make absolutely certain there could be no misunderstanding about the very limited role of the Federal government, so insisted on adding the Tenth Amendment.

The Tenth Amendment is really a summary statement of what the Constitution is all about.

Most of the governing in America was supposed to be handled by state and local government, or by families and individuals.

The federal government is supposed to do only a few very specific things, such as provide for the common defense, set up a system of justice, ensure domestic tranquility, establish a currency, ensure the free flow of commerce among the states, and that’s about it.

The federal government is supposed to do only those functions that only a national government can do.

The rest of the governing was supposed to be handled by state and local government.

So if Massachusetts wants to mess up health care with ObomneyCare, it’s free to do so. But no one is forced to live there.

A social safety net is best handled by state and local government, which can better see who really needs help . . . on the principle that government governs best when it’s closest to the people.

So no more raising the debt ceiling, period.

It’s time to lower the debt ceiling and start forcing the federal government to divest itself of most of what it’s doing.

Now is the ideal time to  start forcing the federal government to scale itself back down to Constitutional size.

REUTERS: A hard-won budget deal that was touted as the biggest domestic spending cut in U.S. history when it passed Congress last month will actually cause the government to spend $3.2 billion more in the short term, according to a new estimate released on Monday.

But the deal sets the government on track to spend $122 billion less over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said.

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