When you consider that the Constitution leaves most powers to state governments and the people, and delegates only strictly limited powers to Washington, it is astonishing to compare the size of federal deficits with the states’ budget shortfalls.
In fact, there is no comparison. What the federal government owes is growing nearly as much every month as what is owed by all the states put together after an entire year.
In the next fiscal year, the total, combined budget shortfall of the 50 states will be about $140 billion, the National Association of State Medicaid Directors reports. (Much of the shortfall is related to Medicaid spending.)
And how about the federal government? Well, the current one-year federal deficit is a record $1.4 trillion — 10 times greater than the states’ projected shortfall next year. And the total national debt — combining all federal deficits going back many years — is approaching $14.3 trillion.
So, do you feel you are getting your money’s worth? Think of the decades of unconstitutional federal intervention in education, for instance. Does the world consider America’s K-12 educational system one to be emulated or avoided? Are we at the “top of the heap” in academic achievement for all the money Washington pumps into education, or just “in the middle of the pack”? And are you troubled by a recent study showing little or no long-term benefit for children in the expensive federal Head Start program?
How about big entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare? Is it a ringing endorsement of federal control that those programs are expected to go broke in the not-too-distant future?
Do you think the $862 billion federal “stimulus” worked as promised, or do you have trouble reconciling high unemployment with the president’s claim that the stimulus “created or saved” millions of jobs?
In short, have we really gained much — other than inefficient bureaucracy and outrageous debt — by surrendering to Washington so many of the powers “reserved to the states respectively, or to the People” under the 10th Amendment? Can there really be a solution to those problems so long as the federal government continues to ignore the Constitution?