Crisis!" "Disaster!""Financial Meltdown!" "Fiscal Cliff!" "Deadly Sequester!"
Is the world as we know it coming to an end if we "cut" some 2% off scheduled federal deficit spending? Will hundreds of thousands be thrown out of work? Will the cops, firefighters, and schoolteachers all be laid off? Will there be no one to screen airline passengers? Will our warships be prevented from getting underway?
I think not.
The only thing being cut here is the rate of growth of government spending. Even with these "cuts'' the government will be spending more money this year than last! Again---Even with the "cuts," the government will be spending more money this year than last! Secondly, every single politician over the last 30 years has campaigned on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Maybe now is the time to actually do something about it. And don't forget that our president has espoused a "balanced" approach to the federal budget; that is, higher taxes and curtailed spending. He got his higher taxes in January. Now it's time for him to pony up on the curtailed spending thing. Yet all he talks about is raising more taxes! No higher taxes--no deal!
Our spendthrift leaders seem to want to paint the bleakest fiscal picture possible to scare us into giving them permission to spend ever more money. I think they want us to be as inconvenienced as possible, and, as a result, may cut vital services whether they have to or not. Compare that to what will happen in the many families (most of us) who will be able to spend only a little more this year than last. If things really did get tight, would they, for example, quit feeding their youngest kid? Of course not! They would they scale down their satellite TV package from 300 channels to 150! Well, if neccessary, the government should scale down similar frills, leaving critical services intact.
One money-saving idea would be to cut down the trip frequency of that fleet of jumbo jets flying between the White House and Hawaii, servicing that golf-junket entourage. Then let's start looking at things like foreign aid to the PLO, and, yes, entitlement reform. There are just too few young wage-earners to support the high population of us older folks who suck up all those expensive government services. Unless something is done soon, it's only a matter of time until we implode from the unsustainable borrowing of 40 cents out of every dollar spent. We may be too big to fail, but we are too big to be bailed out as well.
No, the real crisis is not that we aren't spending enough money, it's that we are spending too much money. So let's take that first baby step....now!
Tom Felhofer
Union
