Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

It appears to me that the United States Congress is concentrating on the economic slow down at the detriment of all other issues.

Conservatives outside of the "Beltway" wonder why the Congress and the President is avoiding the predictable crisis coming to the big three entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Our new president's avowed determination to confront the economic crisis has been significantly devoid of concern for entitlements.

Such issues as the Social Security payroll tax, which Conservatives would cut for several years from 12.4 percent to 8 percent since the punitive tax now suppresses job creation. Presently the "SS" tax is raising more revenue than Social Security is dispensing and will continue to do so until 2017. The surplus is invested in Treasury bonds. That amounts to lending it to the government, "which in turn," Cooper says, "spends it on everything except Social Security."

President Lyndon Johnson, to make the deficit numbers during the Vietnam War less scary, adopted the "unified budget," under which Social Security's surplus was mingled with general revenue, thereby reducing disguising, the deficit's size.
In typical political budgeting sleight of hand this pilfering of the Social Security tax funds to use in the general revenue expenditures, prevents the public from knowing, and Congress from being compelled to act on, facts about the entitlement programs' unfunded liabilities.

The end result will be promises to future beneficiaries that future taxpayers may not be willing to keep.That is because the public will sooner or later realize that the spending that Congress is doing now will be passed on to the younger generation in the form of IOUs!

More Americans should read the 188-page 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government -- the only government document that calculates what deficit and debt numbers would be if the government practiced, as businesses must, accrual accounting.

Under such accounting, future outlays to which beneficiaries are entitled by existing law are acknowledged as expenditures before they are paid. Were the Social Security surplus sequestered for accounting purposes, reflecting the truth that it is already obligated, and were there similar treatment of the other entitlement programs' liabilities, the deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 would have been $3 trillion rather than $454.8 billion. The report's numbers show that the true national debt is $56 trillion, not the widely reported $10 trillion.Source: U.S. Govt. reports

The report says that in 25 years the portion of the population 65 and older will increase from 12 percent to 20 percent, while the share of the population that is working and paying taxes will decrease from 60 percent to 55 percent. If Medicare spending continues to grow, as it has for four decades, more than 1 1/2 times as fast as the economy, the big three entitlements, which currently are 44 percent of all federal expenditures (excluding interest costs of the national debt), will be 65 percent by 2030. Under current law, 30 years from now government revenue will cover only half of anticipated expenditures.

For years, many conservatives advocated a "starve the beast" approach to limiting government. They supported any tax cut, of any size, at any time, for any purpose, assuming that, deprived of revenue, government spending would stop growing. But spending continued, and government borrowing encouraged government's growth by making big government cheap: People were given $1 worth of government but were charged less than that, the balance being shifted, through debt, to future generations. In 2003, Republicans fattened the beast with the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which added almost $8 trillion in the present value of benefits scheduled, but unfunded, over the next 75 years.

Meanwhile Senator Carl Levin the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee believes that the present law preventing homosexuals from serving in the military should be overturned. And President Obama agrees in principal, as he said "the only qualification for service should be the willingness(desire) to serve"!It appears the ability to read, write, hear properly, and perform the tasks needed to perform their military duties no longer are important to Liberals like Obama and Levin. Misfits and idiots are welcome into the army that these people believe should defend our liberty?


"Liberalism's signature achievement -- the welfare state's entitlement buffet -- will, unless radically reduced, starve government of resources needed for everything on liberalism's agenda for people not elderly. Conservatives want government limited, but not this way".
Source: George Will