Cutting is “Spending” in America

Cancer cells grow and multiply like normal human tissue cells, but unlike normal cells, cancer cells suck up body resources without doing anything beneficial for the body. They eventually kill the body.

The abnormal growth of government and government spending does exactly the same to civilizations. In the United States, government growth and spending has multiplied to the point where the draw down on productive contributors is starting to kill the host.

There is little incentive to contribute values in the market place when the federal, state, and local governments are taking more than 50% of a taxpayer’s income in many instances. Why work hard to create if the value will be confiscated?

There is little incentive to contribute values in the market place when the federal, state, and local governments are regulating and harassing hard working risk taking businessmen out of business. Why open shop in America and put up with all the red tape hassle, when a decent profit and risk to benefit ratio can be had with a shop in Mexico or Thailand?

There is little incentive to contribute values in the market place when the federal, state, and local governments are spending their cut on things which provide little or no benefit to the vast majority of individual Americans. The $1 trillion squandered so far on the Iraq war alone has resulted in far more losses to American taxpayers than the financial damage to the Japanese from the recent earthquake and tsunami. It’s just another huge government “investment” with no expected return.

Speeding spending trains do not slow down, much less stop, easily. Just the interest on U.S. debt is now into the hundreds of $billions annually. The latest government budget shutdown averting deal would cut only 38.5 billion from next year’s budget, and most of that would be “savings” from money otherwise appropriated for this or that boondoggle of the past, but not yet spent. In any case, that kind of money is like crumbs on the table left over after a marauding swarm of cockroaches have finished.  

Hell, the Pentagon can’t even put a halt to out of control spending on its own worthless projects without congressional approval. Legislation was necessary to permit termination of the Marine Corps’ multi billion-dollar amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program, which required the purchase 573 new monster military vehicles, at a cost of $12 billion. Certain fat cat beneficiaries of the government military industrial complex mentality are hopping mad about it.

General Electric Corp. has vowed to press forward with development of a controversial second engine for a futuristic jet fighter using its own funds despite the fact that the Pentagon has issued a stop work order on the project, which has already cost billions, calling it a "waste of taxpayer money."

GE has aggressively grown to become one of the nation's top corporate spenders on lobbying for government contracts, taxpayer dollars, and political influence in Washington. ABC News reports that GE has a stable full of former congressional leaders from both parties on their payroll, including such well-known figures as former Sen. Trent Lott and former Rep. Dick Gephardt. They also hired Barack Obama's former campaign manager, David Plouffe, as a consultant, and GE president Jeffery Immelt is intimate with the Obama administration.

Spending habits of Republicans and Democrats nowadays is mostly the same; the only differences being in what items they want to spend taxpayer money on and how much they want to spend on them. One thing is for sure though: both parties strive to benefit their own political advantage seekers first and foremost. Neither have the intellectual guts to fix the present debt and deficit crises.

That’s where the problem with government overspending lies. Those who benefit the most from it naturally want it to continue. Lobbyists and political influence peddlers want their moneys worth from politicians. They will do what is necessary to protect their spoils, and the financial health of the nation may be damned. Those of us who contribute the least to the overspending problem will end up suffering the most in financial consequences. We’re the ones who have to pay off the debt.  

AP reports that both the U.S. and Afghan governments have agreed that the American military should remain involved in Afghanistan after the planned 2014 end of combat operations to “help train and advise Afghan forces.” The U.S. wants a long-term relationship with Afghanistan and President Karzai desires U.S. security guarantees and commitments to enhance stability and prosperity for him and his government – a sweet deal for political advantage seekers on both sides of the ocean at the expense of American taxpayers. The same thing will happen in Iraq.      

Our own president is "committed to cutting spending,” but won’t support “deep cuts that will undermine our ability to out-educate, out-build, and out-innovate the rest of the world." In short, President Obama won’t support any cuts which might offend his following of political advantage seekers.

Instead of getting serious about cutting government spending, President Obama claimed that “we can’t afford to keep the [Bush] tax cuts.” He actually regards a tax cut as spending as though the taxpayer is spending government money by keeping some of his own money in his own pocket.

The president has repeatedly said that “we can’t afford to cut” this or that project or program as though a reduction or cut in spending is somehow translated into spending, which is exactly the opposite of a cut in spending.

Calling tax and spending cuts "spending" -- That kind of rhetorical nonsense has to be at the absolute pinnacle of statist government arrogance in the history of political deception.