The Republican House Budget Committee just released its plan for how to balance the budget. One little catch is that the proposal talks only of the possibility of this happening in 10 years. The Democrats, they complain, don’t even try to balance the budget. Well, at least they’re more honest about it. It used to be that we looked at five-year plans in the socialist systems, but here we are facing a conservative proposal to “maybe” balance the budget in 10 years.
This achievement will occur, they claim, without raising taxes. But everybody knows Republicans are just as capable of raising taxes as are the Democrats. They are certainly not bashful about increasing spending. However this budget report claims that they can cut $5.5 trillion in spending — a more aggressive goal than they have ever before proposed. They emphasize a fairer and a simpler tax system to promote job creation and a healthy economy, which I think is nothing more than wishful thinking.
The claim is also made that the country will be put on a path to “paying off the debt by growing the economy and making government more efficient, effective, and accountable.” The claim that has been made by conservatives over many decades has always been that all we need to do is lower the rate of taxes and get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse and the economy will thrive and the debt will go down. There’s never a suggestion that it is necessary to achieve limited government or that policies have to change, such as our attitude toward the welfare state and certainly the warfare state.
The new proposal calls on Congress to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That suggestion has been around for a long time. And what makes us believe that if it’s in the Constitution that the budget should be balanced, it would actually occur? From my experience, the Constitution is not held in high regard in Washington—to say the least. There are too many loopholes, and too many off-budget programs that can be relied on. All we have to do is look at the recent history of the bailouts that occurred off-budget in the crisis of 2008-2009. Are they really going to be able to control the spending that the Federal Reserve participates in? I don’t believe too many Americans actually believe that’s a possibility. And the majority of Americans today want a much more thorough understanding of the Federal Reserve, with a growing number calling for complete repeal of the Federal Reserve Act.
Republicans are still saying that they want full repeal of Obamacare. Unfortunately, past history reveals that although there may be some tinkering with Obamacare, the odds of taking away the so-called good parts of the program are slim to none.
The real clinker in the Republican proposal has to do with their blatant plans to robustly increase the military budget for what they claim is troop training, equipment, and compensation. In reality, they are just accommodating the military-industrial complex that they see as necessary for political fundraising. They constantly refer to this type of spending as “defense spending.” A more honest reference to this part of the budget would be to call it “military spending,” because it is the belief of many that the way we spend the money in the military actually reduces the safety and security of this country.
Their dependency on the old cliché of cutting waste, corporate welfare, fraud, and abuse will prove to be of no value. Government by its very nature is wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive to all Americans and is accomplished at bankrupting the country. Our problems will not be solved by the budget committee. It is not a budgetary problem. It’s a philosophy of government problem. It is the nature of government that we have to deal with. As long as the American people go along with accepting the idea of the welfare state, for which the wealthy benefit more than the poor, and a military that is expected to police the world, it’s doomed to fail. The total failure of that approach is coming fast. The bankruptcy of this country is at our doorstep.
Tinkering with the budget and resorting to worn-out clichés will do nothing to curtail the rapidly expanding national debt, now over $18 trillion. Only through a moral approach to liberty and the understanding of how free markets work, along with a strictly limited government, will we ever be able to restore to our country both peace and prosperity.
