The Congress has just passed the largest spending bill in our history. Let’s see what we get for our money, yes our money. However, I must digress to make sure we must understand how this system works. The basic premise is that if you borrow money, you have to pay it back. If you do not pay it back, someone who holds your collateral will call the debt. If you can’t pay it back the collateral is sized. OK, now that we have established the ground rules, we need to examine who is the borrower; who is the lender; who are the guarantors; how is this loan going to be repaid.
Who is the borrower? This one is fairly simple; it is the United States Congress and the President of the United States. Just as an aside, what are they borrowing money for? The stated purpose of the loan is to revitalize the United States economy and get people working again. Therefore, we need to examine the loan document to see where the money is going to be spent. Since the loan papers exceed 800 pages, I am not going to try to enumerate the whole package but rather give some representative examples.
$88 million to move the Public Health Service into a new building (what happened to Two Men and A Truck?)
$34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
$1 BILLION (yes with a B) for the Census Bureau (which is now going to fall directly under the president’s chief-of-staff)
$89 BILLION for Medicaid
$2.4 BILLION for “neighborhood stabilization” activities (read ACORN bailout/beef-up)
1.2 BILLION for a summer youth program
36 BILLION to expand unemployment (don’t we already have enough people out of work?)
Ok, you should get the picture by now. This short list of just over $130 BILLION shows me no examples of getting our economy out of the doldrums and putting people back to work. Instead, it shows me a gross expansion of our government “nanny state” mentality, Keynesian economics at its absolute worse (but I think that is redundant).
Who is the lender? That is fairly easy when you examine who is buying all of our paper. It is mostly being bought by foreign entities that do not necessarily have the United States’ best interest at heart; in other words, potential enemies such as the Peoples’ Republic of China, and Saudi Arabia. These are not benevolent regimes. At some point they are going to call the note and force the United States to “pony-up the cash.” What has President Obama promised these folks? What sweet deals has he promised for these loans? Or is he so inept and naïve as to think these lenders are just out for our benefit?
Who are the guarantors of this loan and how is it going to be repaid? That one is easy too. The guarantors are you, me, our children, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren. The obligations that this congress and administration have made exceed the GDP of the United States for decades to come. All of this money can be paid back in 10 or 20 years if the federal government stops spending at the end of 2009 and only pays back the loan (yup, that is going to happen). Our federal government is worse than a herd of pigs that have just come off a 10 mile hike and discovered a new slop trough. They have the arrogance to believe that we are stupid and will never understand that this program is part of the president’s plan for redistribution of wealth. It is his plan to punish individualism, entrepreneurship, and initiative.
My question is “Where is the outrage, where is the righteous indignation from those rugged American individualists?” We hear from bloggers and Conservative commentators about how bad this “Stimulus Package” is for America but where is the indignation coming from our congressmen and senators? We see unanimous negative votes from Republican congressmen, and that is laudable, but where is the screaming and shouting from the highest buildings across this land calling for a popular campaign against this federal government gorging?
The only way we are going to take back our country is for grassroots organizations such as the Coalition for a Conservative Majority to grow and work from the bottom up to change the mindset that has become prevalent in Washington. If the average citizen does not stand up for our rights then we will get what we deserve.
I urge everyone reading this to pass it along and go to www.ccmajority.org to see what you can do.
As always I welcome your comments and discussion.
Daniel C. Lanotte
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