WITH permission and a promise not to muss it up, we reprint the graphic our news folks ran Tuesday. Our talented graphics department can make a statement with only a few words. Our timid vocabulary can only take us so far.
Long-Suffering Taxpayer will note that the budget deficit—the yearly bill—has gone up, or rather down, deeper into the negative, every year Donald Trump has been in office. The trend had been for the blasted thing to shrink even in the Obama years, until his last year in 2016. Not that government spending was falling under President Obama, mind you, but tax receipts were covering the spending frenzy back then. Nowadays, not so much.
Look at the pie graphs. The interest Americans are paying totals $371 billion this year. And every dime of the corporate income tax the government rakes in won’t even cover that. If the government stopped paying for defense tomorrow, and laid off all airmen and Marines, docked the boats and shut the forts, the government still wouldn’t break even. We are down $866.8 billion so far this year, and defense spending is only $601 billion.
The feds are going to take in $3.329 trillion this fiscal year. That’s not enough to feed the gaping maw of this behemoth. For the federal government will spend $4.108 trillion.
Imagine the indulgence and lack of restraint in a system that can’t get by on $3.329 trillion a year. But you don’t have to imagine. Just look at your national capital. What a taxing experience.
Some of us will remember a president named Reagan being criticized for government spending during his administration. As it turns out, President Reagan was a piker. The 1980s were glory years as far as how much debt Americans had on the credit card, at least when compared to what they were producing (that GDP).
Fast forward to 2019, and we are closing in on World War II kind of numbers. Back then, we were fighting for national survival in the Pacific and at least the survival of Western democracy in the Atlantic. These days we’re putting Obamacare, entitlements and foreign aid on the credit card. And to think, many of the Democratic candidates for president have even more plans for delirious and enthusiastic government spending.
For Pete’s sake, tax revenue rose 3 percent so far in this fiscal year, according to the press. But that doesn’t help much when spending increases 8 percent. Folks, we’re going in the wrong direction.
We’re not economists—we would never want to be considered practitioners of such a Dismal Science—but it is a fact that higher taxes and more government borrowing act as a brake on private investment. And one day—who knows when?—the inflation monster will arrive, with an appetite to eat everything in sight. Including 401(k)s, home equity, savings and maybe the tomato garden.
If common sense were more common, now would be the best time to pay down the debt—now that the feds are taking in $3.3-trillion-plus every year. Instead we add to it. And when that rainy day comes, as it always does, we will be ill prepared.
Thank you, graphics department, for the reprint. There are some numbers that are an editorial comment all by themselves.
