USA Today: Who's spending big now? The 'party of small government'

[PhilipShore]

USA Today
Who's spending big now? The 'party of small government'
2/20/2006

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-02-20-debate-our-view_x.htm

Say you're in a financial hole. You're spending more money than you're taking in — $4,000 this year alone. After much effort, you figure out ways to save $400 in the next five years. Would you then turn around, spend double that amount and put yourself deeper in debt?

Probably not — unless, that is, you were a member of Congress running for re-election this year and you get to spend other people's money. Add eight zeros to the numbers in the example above, and you'll get an idea of the shell game going on in Washington.

The federal budget deficit will be in the range of $400 billion this year. That means roughly $1 in every $6 spent by the government will be borrowed money. So a few weeks ago, with great self-congratulatory fanfare, Congress passed and the president signed what was billed as a $40 billion, five-year deficit reduction. Now Congress is weighing tax-cut packages that would wipe out those projected savings almost twice over.

The overall national debt amounts to nearly $75,000 hanging over every household in the nation. Meanwhile, the cost of servicing the debt rises, squandering $250 billion a year. Only the Pentagon, Social Security and Medicare cost more.

[mrcheerful]

1. What I'd like to know is where did this myth start? Hoover was a charge

and spend puke, Ike was also charge and spend, as well as Nixon Reagan and both Bush's. Pukes have always been the party of the rich for the rich and do anything to farther enrich the rich. I never seen a puke that ever had a small government once in office. The only thing pukes have done since the 1920's is start class wars. Trickle down economics was Hoovers ideal, where did that end up leaving the american worker? you got it working longer hours for less pay and fewer benefits. The pukes have never cared about the working class nor the poor. This whole ideal of pulling ones self up by the boot straps is a myth started by people that inherited their money off Grand sires who got their money off the backs of others. Bill Gates is a good example of how the old money families scammed their way into riches. Even the people who struck it rich in gold and silver mines didn't do the digging, they just bought the miners equipment and took a cut after the work was done. 9 times out of 10 they swindled the miners out of their mines. These are the facts of history, the rich have always been best at stealing.