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.” —Ronald Reagan
Pollster Frank Luntz understands wahtpresident "Rexus Magnumus" meant!. In a recent column for The New York Daily News, Luntz reports on his interview survey of 6,400 people, the results of which appear in his new book "What Americans Really Want ... Really." Luntz discovered that people are angry with the government because of the lack of accountability by our leaders and a lack of progress on anything meaningful in Washington.
The "absence of accountability," he writes, "ranks No. 1 in the hearts and guts of the average American. It is as though they get elected and move to Washing ton, and forget who sent them. I sincerely believe they live in a unpenitrible bubble only accessed through and by special interests that will keep them in their powerful seat!
Washington spends billions to bail out big business and then can't explain where the money went. Washington spends $800 billion on a stimulus package filled with earmarks and pork projects. And now Washington is trying to create a trillion-dollar health-care experiment when over 85 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care just as it is."
Luntz continues: "This could be forgiven, perhaps, if those elected officials from Washington exhibited even an ounce of respect for the voters who pay their salaries. But the combination of a political class that ignores those with whom they disagree and a business class that ignores the very real suffering of the working class (if they are, in fact, working) while pocketing million-dollar bonuses has convinced the public that no one cares."
As a candidate for president, Barack Obama decried the financial toll that the Iraq war was taking on the economy, but Obama’s proposed spending on welfare through 2010 will eclipse Bush’s war spending by more than $260 billion.That is a quarter of a trillion. The figure we never heard about until Obama and his Congress took over!
Even after he has been in office for eight months he is still blaming Bush for the deficits we are builing. It is time for people to realize that he owns the debt now and has done nothingto reduce it, but doubled up on the debt!
“Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned,” then-Sen. Barack Obama told a Charleston, W.V., crowd in March 2008. “This is creating problems in our fragile economy. And that kind of debt also places an unfair burden on our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay it.”
During the entire administration of George W. Bush, the Iraq war cost a total of $622 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
President Obama’s welfare spending will reach $888 billion in a single fiscal year--2010--more than the Bush administration spent on war in Iraq from the first “shock and awe” attack in 2003 until Bush left office in January.
Obama’s spending proposals call for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This will lead to a spending total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for low-income Americans and those at 200 percent of the poverty level, or $44,000 for a family of four. Among that total, $7.5 trillion will be federal money and $2.8 trillion will be federally mandated state expenditures.
“One in seven in total federal and state dollars now goes to welfare. But this is a completely unknown story,” Rector said. “This is not being reported. No one knows Obama is spending $10 trillion on welfare.”
Welfare spending has taken its toll on the federal debt. Since the beginning of the “war on poverty,” $15.9 trillion has been spent on welfare programs. The total cost of every war in American history, starting with the American Revolution, is $6.4 trillion when adjusted for inflation.
Welfare has been the fastest growing part of the federal government’s spending, increasing by 292 percent from 1989 to 2008. That’s compared to Social Security and Medicare, which grew 213 percent, the study says.And the Left ignores their handy work, and screams about the increased cost of private medical care!
Adjusted for inflation, welfare is 5 percent of the gross domestic product today. It was only 1.2 percent of GDP in 1965, the report says. Also, over the next decade, $1.5 trillion in welfare benefits will be paid to low-skilled immigrants.
Adjusted for inflation, welfare is 5 percent of the gross domestic product today. It was only 1.2 percent of GDP in 1965, the report says. Also, over the next decade, $1.5 trillion in welfare benefits will be paid to low-skilled immigrants. Mostly to people who sneaked across our pourus border!
Still, high levels of poverty are reflected by the U.S. Census Bureau because shockingly, the bureau counts only 4 percent of the total welfare spending as income when it calculates poverty. Thus, most discussions on poverty begin on the virtual premise that welfare does not exist, the study says.
“None of the $800 billion being spent is counted as income, so the Census comes back and they say, ‘Oh my goodness, we have 40 million poor people. We need to spend more money,’” Rector explained. “That is a game WE taxpayers can never win.”