If Hillary Clinton was elected president and all her campaign promises were enacted, it would cost the taxpayers an additional $724 billion during her first term, and that's only if you are naive enough to believe Hillary's health care plan will only cost $110 billion per year, as Hillary claims. Analysts say it will cost much more. Government programs invariably cost far more than the advertised price tag. That's part of the come-on. You can find a breakdown of all Hillary's new spending here.
Plus, the election is over a year away and she is coming up with new ways to spend your money nearly every day. The Hillary quote of the week is this: "I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all". Amen to that, Mrs. Clinton. Amen to that.
In case nobody has noticed, our country is $9 trillion in debt, and we are facing exploding future costs with the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. Now might not be the best time to go on an enormous new government spending spree (major understatement). We haven't paid for the last spending sprees yet. The government is like a family who has maxed out all their credit cards going out and getting MORE CREDIT CARDS to pay the bill for the last ones. That's the last thing they need. What they need is some financial discipline. So does our government, and that's a pretty rare commodity in Washington D.C., at least during my lifetime. The Democrats don't even make any pretense at controlling spending. Instead, they just seek eternal new sources of tax revenue to pay for all their spending schemes. Talk about a prescription for disaster. The Republicans cut taxes but keep right on spending, which sure isn't much better.
I just read that the federal deficit is down to $168 billion for 2007. The deficit is falling, which is at least a positive trend, maybe even impressive since we are at war. Without the Iraq war, we'd have the same sort of fake tiny surplus that we had during Clinton's last couple years in office. I call it a fake surplus, because 35% of payroll tax revenue is generated by stealing our Social Security money, so I don't get too excited about it. In reality, we'd still have a deficit, just like we did back during Clinton's fake 'balanced budget' years. The government has rigged the numbers to hide the truth from us poor rubes. The thing that struck me the most during the fake Clinton balanced budget was how fast the politicians in Congress fell all over each other trying to spend the 'surplus' money that they thought was coming for the next decade (as if !). After 35 straight years of deficits, they got one theoretical surplus, and they were all acting like kids on Christmas morning. If anything ever revealed the true nature of big government politicians, that was it. Pathetic.
It's said you get the government you deserve, and if we are dumb enough to keep electing these politicians who hold out a carrot and pretend they are going to give us all kinds of free goodies, then we deserve to lose our place as the world's pre-eminent country. I never have figured out this fascination certain of our elitists seem to have with European socialism. Why should we emulate that, when it was the free market capitalist structure of our country that allowed us to surpass them so quickly in the first place ?
Limited government and low taxes is the only way to go in this free society (is it still free ?). The challenge is to find politicians who really believe in it and act accordingly. We can turn this ship around before it's too late, but only if we wake up.
Or, we can continue to enjoy the party as the US Titanic heads toward the iceberg and keep electing these pandering non-leader politicians. Who knows, maybe next week Hillary will promise to give us all brand new shiny Cadillacs if we vote for her. Yippee ! Party on, dudes !
