Friends,
The Congress has just passed the largest spending bill in our history. Let’s see what we get for our money, yes our money. However, I must digress to make sure we must understand how this system works. The basic premise is that if you borrow money, you have to pay it back. If you do not pay it back, someone who holds your collateral will call the debt. If you can’t pay it back the collateral is sized. OK, now that we have established the ground rules, we need to examine who is the borrower; who is the lender; who are the guarantors; how is this loan going to be repaid.
Who is the borrower? This one is fairly simple; it is the United States Congress and the President of the United States. Just as an aside, what are they borrowing money for? The stated purpose of the loan is to revitalize the United States economy and get people working again. Therefore, we need to examine the loan document to see where the money is going to be spent. Since the loan papers exceed 800 pages, I am not going to try to enumerate the whole package but rather give some representative examples.
$88 million to move the Public Health Service into a new building (what happened to Two Men and A Truck?)
$34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
$1 BILLION (yes with a B) for the Census Bureau (which is now going to fall directly under the president’s chief-of-staff)
$89 BILLION for Medicaid
$2.4 BILLION for “neighborhood stabilization” activities (read ACORN bailout/beef-up)
1.2 BILLION for a summer youth program
36 BILLION to expand unemployment (don’t we already have enough people out of work?)
Ok, you should get the picture by now. This short list of just over $130 BILLION shows me no examples of getting our economy out of the doldrums and putting people back to work. Instead, it shows me a gross expansion of our government “nanny state” mentality, Keynesian economics at its absolute worse (but I think that is redundant).
Who is the lender? That is fairly easy when you examine who is buying all of our paper. It is mostly being bought by foreign entities that do not necessarily have the United States’ best interest at heart; in other words, potential enemies such as the Peoples’ Republic of China, and Saudi Arabia. These are not benevolent regimes. At some point they are going to call the note and force the United States to “pony-up the cash.” What has President Obama promised these folks? What sweet deals has he promised for these loans? Or is he so inept and naïve as to think these lenders are just out for our benefit?
Who are the guarantors of this loan and how is it going to be repaid? That one is easy too. The guarantors are you, me, our children, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren. The obligations that this congress and administration have made exceed the GDP of the United States for decades to come. All of this money can be paid back in 10 or 20 years if the federal government stops spending at the end of 2009 and only pays back the loan (yup, that is going to happen). Our federal government is worse than a herd of pigs that have just come off a 10 mile hike and discovered a new slop trough. They have the arrogance to believe that we are stupid and will never understand that this program is part of the president’s plan for redistribution of wealth. It is his plan to punish individualism, entrepreneurship, and initiative.
My question is “Where is the outrage, where is the righteous indignation from those rugged American individualists?” We hear from bloggers and Conservative commentators about how bad this “Stimulus Package” is for America but where is the indignation coming from our congressmen and senators? We see unanimous negative votes from Republican congressmen, and that is laudable, but where is the screaming and shouting from the highest buildings across this land calling for a popular campaign against this federal government gorging?
The only way we are going to take back our country is for grassroots organizations such as the Coalition for a Conservative Majority to grow and work from the bottom up to change the mindset that has become prevalent in Washington. If the average citizen does not stand up for our rights then we will get what we deserve.
I urge everyone reading this to pass it along and go to www.ccmajority.org to see what you can do.
As always I welcome your comments and discussion.
Dan
Dan Lanotte
- The Carpenter's Mate
- Falcon, Colorado
- I am a 31 year Navy veteran, 15 years as a SONAR Technician and 16 years as an Intelligence Officer. I am a Goldwater-Reagan Conservative with a deep love for this wonderful country of opportunity and am concerned about the continued abrogation of our freedoms. In addition to putting my thoughts and political philosophy in these pages I enjoy teaching firearms and personal protection in keeping with the spirit of the Second Amendment. My courses are listed at www.carpmateconsulting.com.
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2 comments:
Thanks, Dan, for informing and taking principled stands and caring for our future.
Yes, I'm concerned about the high levels of spending and the comparative low levels of investing in assets that will bring a future return.
If our national goverment can't avoid putting out large amounts of money, I would prefer to see the money placed in investments that could make a difference to our future productivity and prosperity.
You may not agree with all of these particulars but investments could include:
Alternative Energy - Although I'd want to see the private sector create these businesses
Information Technology - bring high speed internet and cell phone service to rural areas that don't have it now
Funding higher education - K-12 education is wasteful, and over-funded, the funding is often not controlled by special interests to propogandize youth to their agendas. On the other hand, higher education could use more funding, particularly funding to support science, engineering, and technologies to increase our economic development and make us more competitive with other nations.
Conversion to metric system and other standards where America has fallen behind - By hanging on to our unique standards of dimension, weight, volume, temperature, etc. the USA has unnecessarily isolated itself from the rest of the world. Two big oceans and two big borders already leave the USA to be highly isolated from other countries. We buy oil and electronics goods and much more from other countries, we do want them to buy more from us. They told school children 40-50 years ago that we would be on the metric system by now.
I don't like to see all of this spending of money that we don't have. High inflation and high interest payments are real possibilities for the future. Our tax money each year will increasingly go to paying interest on the over-spending of previous years.
If you borrow money and buy a car and fail to make payment, they will re-possess your car. If China and OPEC oil states lend our government money and they fail to make payment, our government will lose sovereignty.
Just as companies have often merged, governments could also merge and we could be left with fewer governments, fewer countries, higher centralization, and less freedom.
Excellent discussion. You are right, I don't fully agree with all of your positions, but I do appreciate the comment.
You are welcome anytime.
Dan
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