BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com
One of Ronald Reagan’ most famous speeches had to do with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall that separated Free Western Germans from Trapped Communist Eastern Germans under the control of the Soviet Union post World War II.
‘Mr. Gorbachev: Tear Down This Wall!’ President Reagan declared on June 12, 1987 outside of the Brandenburg Gate. 29 months later, it fell by the weight of its terrible history to the side of freedom and injustice.
Who says ‘words can’t make a difference’?
We think it is high-time to declare to our elected representatives and senators across our states and nation the following:
‘President Obama/Senator Blutarsky/Congressman Belfrey/Governor Moonbeam: Stop Using Taxpayer Money As An ATM Machine!’
What do we mean by that exactly?
‘Anything that can and should be done in the private sector through private banks and financial institutions will be done outside of any taxpayer involvement’
How bad can the problem be anyway? It can’t be too bad, can it?
Let us help you count the ways:
Anytime you read or hear the words: ‘public/private partnership’, it usually means this: ‘We can’t find the financing at a price we want to pay…so let’s stick it to the taxpayer instead. He/she won’t even know what hit them until we have built our pet project and made millions off the origination fees and gotten out of it.’
Because the truth of the matter is that if a project is worth funding, there are investors in the private sector who will fund it. It might not be with as low of an interest rate as the managers want or with as preferential of terms as they would prefer but great ideas get funded in America on a daily basis still believe it or not.
What about professional sports teams such as when the NFL or MLB franchises ‘threaten to leave town’ unless the local politicians force a tax hike on local residents to pay for an upgrade or a new $1 billion stadium? If every local Mayor and elected official would stand on the side of the taxpayer and say ‘NO!’, then the private owners of each franchise would have to find the financing on their own and stay put in Green Bay or LA or Chicago because no one else would be trying to ‘entice’ (bribe) them to come to their town with a brand-spanking new taxpayer-financed new stadium, now would they?
What about this new $862 million bailout of the sugar industry that is now being considered by Congress? This sets up the potentially gruesome and ridiculous situation where one federally-subsidized program, ethanol, might be called upon to help bailout another federally-subsidized program, sugar to the tune of millions of other taxpayer dollars.
We don’t need an extra 800,000 tons of sugar (that is 1.6 Billion Pounds of fat-inducing sugar or an additional 5.16 pounds of sugar for every man, woman and child in America living today! for those of you keeping score at home) filtering into the food supply chain, do we? Not with the obesity pandemic we are now about to enter in America. In fact, we could use a diminution of 1.6 trillion pounds of sugar and corn sweetener and God knows what other forms of rapid-sugar intake are in our food today.
How about Medicare? Let’s talk about Medicare. We saw an article which stated that the Paul Ryan Budget might force some changes in the sclerotic and byzantine Medicare program (it will) but went on to say that it will ‘force seniors to make sacrifices in how they pay for Medicare’.
For one thing, there is no real definition of ‘sacrifice’ in the Webster’s Dictionary that would include any program where you get at least 3 times the amount of money out of a program that you will ever pay into it. That is the current case with Medicare. It will soon become 4 times the amount you will ever conceivably pay into Medicare over your working lifetimes.
On top of that, the federal taxpayer subsidizes each and every senior citizen, man and woman, regardless of their ability to pay for their own health care (such as Warren Buffett or Bill Gates in the near future) to the tune of close to 85% of their Medicare bills each and every year.
There is a 75% general taxpayer fund ‘subsidy’ that allows the Part B premium for every senior citizen to be an absurdly and actuarial impossibly low rate of between $320-$360/month. The current working taxpayer pays for the entire cost of Medicare Part A through their payroll taxes paid each month, not the retirees who paid for the Part A benefits of their grandparents during their working lives.
God only knows what the subsidy will be for Part D when all is said and done. And Obamacare! The last CBO cost estimate we saw pegged the federal taxpayer general subsidy of that bill was $2.6 trillion although we have heard it is heading towards $6 trillion soon.
All from the ATM machine known simply as ‘your wallet’ in the form of taxes.
What we don’t take from you in taxes to distribute to these programs in the form of subsidies, we borrow from other nations, although the Chinese have stopped buying US debt for the most part.
So now we borrow it from ourselves. We call this ATM the ‘Expanded Balance Sheet of the Federal Reserve’.
One way or another, we will have to pay this money back. We will either do it in one of several ways: 1) higher taxes; 2) lower benefits; 3) inflation; 4) depreciated currency (which means you can’t buy as much from overseas as you do today) and/or 5) extremely high interest rates when borrowers fail to buy more debt at rates we want to sell it to them.
The bottom line is we have to have a ‘revolution’ in this country. This ‘revolution’ has to be the recognition that government is set up to do the things that our Founders determined government can do best: protect our nation for one thing; build roads and bridges that improve our economy and enhance our collective lives for another.
Everything else that can and should be done by the private sector….should be done by the private sector.
How simple can it be?
Editor’s Note: Frank Hill is the Director of the Institute for the Public Trust in Charlotte, NC. He is former chief of staff to Congressman Alex McMillan of NC and also served on the staffs of former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole and the House Budget Committee.