As I perused the morning news today, I noticed an article in Fox News that reflected one of the things wrong with our out of control government spending.
The article is titled:
Cynthia Nixon on getting single-payer health care in New York: 'Pass it and then figure out how to fund it'
This is an interesting way to achieve fiscal responsibility. By using this logic, simply because the government believes a program is needed is all the justification that is needed to bring it into existence. No consideration needs to be made on how exactly the program will be funded. We can cross that bridge later, after the "mandate" is already in place to start the program.
Fiscal responsibility is something most of us have to deal with as adults. We cannot live beyond our means, unless we want to maintain constant contact with debt collectors. And yet that same type of responsibility ceases to exist once our elected officials get involved. "Pass the program, put it in place, and then we'll figure out what we need to do to keep it afloat (read: how much we need to raise taxes)." Because there will certainly be no other reduction in government services, programs, or staffing to offset a new program.
Is health care in this country broken? With spiraling costs and zero competition between companies that would help lower costs, it could certainly stand some re-tooling. But throwing a new program in place with no regard for the overall cost to the public, and no plan for funding the program is totally irresponsible.
But this is something that elected officials on both sides of the aisle do on a regular basis, and the American public seems to have become totally desensitized to the issue. We do not hold our representatives accountable to out of control spending; but worse yet, due to the games that are played with the Federal budget, it's hard to even know what is the truth and what is fairy tale finances. We blindly put our trust into politicians who tell us to "trust them" and that "they know what they are doing." Indeed, they do know what they are doing - fleecing the public and ensuring their own interests are served, without truly representing the people who elected them.
And even when we do see efforts to "reduce spending," do we even understand the size of the problem? When someone says they've been able to cut $10 million dollars from the budget, we're supposed to jump up and down and cheer that something great has been accomplished. (And indeed, $10 million is a lot of money.) But when held in comparison to the overall US budget, which in 2017 was $4 trillion in expenditures and $3.3 trillion in revenue (meaning $700 billion in shortfall), that $10 million is a pittance. Count the zeros with me:
$700,000,000,000 - revenue short fall
$10,000,000 - savings by eliminating some program
See the difference? Let's make it even easier and take away eight zeros so it's more like a family budget:
$7,000 - revenue short fall
$0.10 - savings by eliminating some program
See the problem now? So you'll excuse me if I find it infuriating that another politician (or in this case, a wanna-be politician) sees fit to push for the creation of a program before funding is even in place. Spending is already out of control. Programs and entitlements are already spending money that isn't there. Putting something else in place before figuring out how to pay for it is not going to solve anything for the people. It will, however, steal more money from our paychecks in the form of higher taxes, and in the end, make us even more enslaved to the government.
Remember, government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem. And it is like a cancer that just keeps metastasizing.
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