It is not really “news” that spending by the federal government is badly out of control.
It’s not “news” because irresponsible spending has been going on so outrageously and for so long. It continues without responsible remedial action by members of Congress and the president.
Taxes are too high — but spending is much higher. Annual deficits of more than a trillion dollars pile up. Thus our federal officials are victimizing the American people by fiscal irresponsibility.
It’s hard to cut excessive spending. There are too many agencies and there are too many people addicted to the “free” money that the federal government creates and manipulates, much of it to “buy” the votes of the people.
President Barack Obama is reported to be planning to ask for some spending “freezes” — not spending cuts — for three years. That would be far short of action to materially reduce the trillion-dollar-plus deficit. In fact, there will be proposals to increase spending in some categories.
Most of the excessive spending does not result from the necessities of national defense or the operation of other essential functions of government. Much of it is unnecessary. And some of it is, in fact, unconstitutional.
Not a dollar can be spent by the federal government without the votes of a majority of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, with the signature of the president. All of these officials are elected by and are supposed to represent “us.” Should we allow them to continue to increase the mortgage on the future of our nation and our children by adding a trillion dollars or more each year to the $12.1 trillion national debt?
And we have to pay a huge part of our tax money just for interest on that rising debt.
Would you like to see a list of the proposed federal spending, with an understandable explanation of each item, and then to have the power to mark out each item you believe is unsound or unreasonable?
Obviously, we as individual citizens can’t do that. But our representatives and senators should. So why don’t we demand they at least begin to take action to reduce the trillion-dollar-plus deficit in a really big way?