The federal budget is (very) slowly working its way through Congress with a fiscal year-end deadline in September. While Congress has an ingrained, bipartisan habit of missing that deadline, the budget preliminaries have provided at least one clear assessment of why we're in such a fiscal mess.
In testimony before the House Budget Committee, Tax Foundation senior advisor Scott Hodge noted the ballooning cost of entitlement programs – which official Washington has decided are doing just fine, nothing to see here. But he also took strong issue with the timetable for the arrested trust funds that support these programs to run out of money:
The looming “depletion” of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds is an accounting fiction. Their deficits don't start in 2033 or whenever the actuaries now predict, the fact is that these programs are draining general revenues now.
Which only makes the official – and absolutely political – decision to ignore potential program reforms even more shocking. But more broadly, Hodge lays out questions lawmakers need to ask of every agency, program and line item in the budget. These include:
Has this program or agency outlived its original mission, or failed its original mission? Terminate it.
Is it redundant or does it duplicate other agencies, programs, or functions? Eliminate it or merge it.
Is it business-like, or does the program compete directly with private businesses? You should approach this question looking for ways to turn tax-guzzling federal enterprises into tax-paying private enterprises.
Reasonable questions. And as unlikely to be asked as the sun is to rise in the West. The sad fact is that behind the cheap political theater and intellectually dishonest talking points, the major political parties are statist in their means and ends. The only real difference between them is in which favored classes reap the benefits.
Or looked at another way, federal budgets are, as Hodge says, “more of a museum of American history than the Smithsonian.” What made them that way, and keeps them that way irrespective of which major party is in control, is the legal plunder at the heart of their respective enterprises.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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What is missing is the fact that Democrats refuse to address the problem nor the problem of over spending and make cuts to agencies and bureaus as well as funding recently to Ukraine that is massively over spending while forcing prices higher while they cut our oil supply and threaten to cut natural gas as well. Pelosi refused to cut unnecessary spending when asked to by Rand Paul. That only exasperated the problem back then for years. To top it off Yellen has admitted she has no idea what she is doing as Secty. of the Treasury and why was she in Ukraine wasting more of our $$$ on that? It is blatant out of control spending and refusal to address the issue of Soc. Sec. short earnings and reckless spending by Democrats for years that has put our economy in jeopardy and threatened the retirement of millions of tax payers while they throw our $$ at illegals that don’t belong here.
IF OUR CORRUPT GOVERNMENT OF DEMORATS , STOPPED FUNDING EVERYBODY / EVERYTHING, SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WOULD NOT BE IN JEOPARDY. OUR GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN FAILING AMERICA/AMERICANS FOR MANY DECADES, IT HAS ONLY NOW BEEN BROUGHT TO A HEAD.
I have a hard time believing SS is broke or depleted. Almost every person in America that has worked has been forced to pay into SS and MC their entire lives. Myself for 60 yrs.
There are more people working and paying than at any other time in our history.
Of the 100% that have paid only about 60% actually live long enough to collect. Others live just a few yrs after retirement and pass away. Younger people are paying in and many of them die for many various reasons.
Where are all of the uncollected funds going?
Have the Crooks in congress stolen it? If it’s actually in an interest bearing trust fund (as it was supposed to be) they should never complain about our increases.
In fact if I had that same amount to invest over my life I would have a better income than overpaid members of congress. So would you.