Isn’t it great to listen to the politicians promise the American taxpayers that all their prayers will be answered? Budgets will be balanced, spending will be cut, our National debt will be reduced, and every American will be back to work and the economy will grow. The sad part is that most of the things that the politicians promise really need to be addressed. We do need to cut our spending; Americans do need jobs, and we need to reduce our National debt. But down deep every American knows that these things will not happen.
Congress has not passed a budget in three years. The president keeps proposing annual fiscal budgets with trillion dollar deficits and unemployment hovers in the 8% to 9% range. Americans know that the unemployment figure is false and misleading. This 9% figure represents just a portion of the real unemployed Americans – those currently collecting unemployment benefits. Conservative estimates place the real unemployment number closer to 16%.
It happens every four years – the push to send people back to Washington to do nothing. It seems the needs of the American people are secondary to the needs of the party whether that party is Democratic or Republican. Many Americans support a fairer flat tax but again we know that it will not happen. Why? Because it makes sense and what would we do with the 100,000 IRS workers and the 12,000 lobbyists that hammer Congress for changes in an already complex tax code. We know that we have an unfair tax system, that the 49% of Americans paying no tax at all should be paying something. Instead we concentrate on the few wealthy Americans that support over 60% of the revenue? We know that even if we increase taxes on this one or two percent of the taxpayers, we will still fall way short of our revenue needs.
Our country has had immigration issues for decades and basically nothing is addressed. Our major entitlement programs are in need of revision. They cannot sustain themselves in the future. Instead money is taken from Medicare to fund Obama Care and the money needed for Social Security is reduced by 2% in each paycheck to fund what is called a “tax break to every American.” Talk about kicking the can down the road!
It would almost appear that our government does not care about the real issues. Interest alone on the National debt is fast approaching $500 billion dollars each and every year that we carry a $16 trillion dollar National debt. The newest tool in the Federal Reserve monetary toolbox is tinkering with interest rates by printing money. Quantitative easing will eventually cripple the American economy with an onset of inflation that will set us back decades. Quantitative easing is a monetary policy used by the Federal Reserve to stimulate the national economy when conventional monetary policy is ineffective. A central bank buys financial assets to inject a pre-determined quantity of money into the economy as contrasted to the usual policy of buying and selling government bonds to keep the market interest rates at a specified target value.
Most of the current issues today are very complex. We are still fighting a war in Afghanistan that is bleeding the Defense Budget dry. We have no jobs for many in our current labor market and no plan to absorb the thousands of American military as they try and transition back into civilian life. However, our leaders of tomorrow have apparently moved into the future as they fail to address the complex issues of today. I still enjoy the speeches that promise “guns and butter” with no increase in taxes. Does anyone remember the slogan from the 1928 Presidential campaign when Herbert Hoover promised “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage?” Sometimes things never change but not long after Mr. Hoover was elected president, the country faced the worst Depression in her history.
