The Vote Pump: The Sound of the Republic Being Flushed
BY Glen Tschirgi12 years, 1 month ago
Do yourself and the Republic a favor: find the time to watch the whole thing.
Beyond the overall point that Bill Whittle makes about the power of deficit spending to buy votes and ensure reelection of spendthrift politicians, this video by Whittle has a other worthwhile attributes:
1. The video is an instant source of expertise on exactly what the numbers are in the Federal Budget, how much is being spent both in real dollars and as a percentage of the overall Budget. We need this information as citizens and need to spread this information far and wide so the politicians have nowhere to hide. These numbers are easily understood and give one of the best visualizations of the enormity of the debt problem we are facing. The politicians in both parties are perversely determined to avoid making the spending cuts necessary because this video makes it abundantly clear that the size of the necessary cuts will be painful to many, many people.
2. This video demonstrates the enormity of the Entitlement State. Notice that the actual dollars being spent on the so-called “discretionary” items in the Budget are relatively small compared to the enormous amounts needed to keep the Entitlement State (the so-called “mandatory spending”) afloat. This is the A-1, Certified, Gargantuan, 16 trillion pound Gorilla in the room. Democrats and Republicans can talk all they like about eliminating the Department of Education or cite the dollars spent on the Defense Department and foreign wars, but it is immediately obvious from this video that the real culprit in our insane Deficit spending is Entitlements. The U.S. is borrowing over 40 cents of every dollar it spends and over 70% of that spending is going to Entitlements.
Yes, Federal agencies and departments need to be eliminated or severely cut back but those cuts will never be enough to take care of the Deficit problem. Entitlements must be cut.
Note, too, that the cuts will have to occur now. As much as I dislike Ron Paul’s rambling wreck of a foreign policy and his crazy, blame-America rants, he is one of the only politicians that is openly talking about reducing spending immediately in large amounts. (Ron Paul falls off the rails, however, because he primarily talks as if cutting Defense spending will solve the problem whereas the video makes it clear that such spending is less than 20% of the total Budget).
If you listen carefully to every, other politician (including some of my favorites such as Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin), they are all talking about cuts of $1 Trillion over ten years or more. That is only $100 billion each year. Check the video and you will see that $100 billion is relative chicken feed against the enormity of the spending. The U.S. literally cannot afford to take ten years to reduce this deficit.
This will require a fundamental change in the way Americans view the Federal government. The vision of Franklin Roosevelt and JFK and Lyndon Johnson and, yes, George W. “Compassionate Conservatism” Bush has to be chucked in favor of States taking the primary responsibility for the welfare of their own citizens. Such a change will require leaders who can give the public the truth about the nightmare we are facing.
3. This video shows how little it takes to actually run the Federal government. Take a look at the actual numbers cited by Whittle in the pie charts for Federal revenues. He cites the total amount spent in Fiscal Year 2011 for the General Services Administration which is responsible for the assets and logistics of the Federal government. That number is $700 million or 1/10th of 1% of the total Budget. Until the last 100 years, the Federal government was able to function quite well without any personal income tax because the scope of the Federal government was something like 1/10th of 1% of what it is today.
The growth and increase in Federal programs, agencies, departments, jurisdiction and oversight in just 100 years is almost unimaginable. Americans have been sold a bill of goods promising a utopian society where a big, central government could makes everyone happy, healthy, wealthy and wise. It has taken 100 years to come to the realization that those promises were, however well intentioned, dangerous lies.
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