Taxes

A recent trend in Washington, D.C. is to spend enormous amounts of taxpayer money on programs that politicians sell to the public as absolutely necessary and important.  That approach led to swift passage of the $700 billion TARP program, the $862 billion stimulus program and the $300 billion mortgage assistance program.  These programs have been expensive, ineffective and inefficient while all paid for with money the government had to borrow from taxpayers, as well as their children and grandchildren. 

On the stimulus package’s one-year anniversary on Feb. 17, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stated that taxpayers had “gotten their money’s worth.”  However, it is difficult to understand how multimillion-dollar “stimulus” programs that research methamphetamine’s effects on rats, build turtle crossings under highways, put up roadside signs to advertise stimulus programs and produce few long-term jobs are effective uses of taxpayer dollars.  In Washington, $977,346 is being spent on a program that will provide just one job and give a few hundred BlackBerrys to smokers to help them kick the habit.

…so goes the ongoing effort to fight government waste, higher taxes, and save the future for our children and grandchildren.

The result of the special election for Senate in Massachusetts reflected a national outpouring of outrage over the overreaching Congress and White House, and a lot of buyer’s remorse for the 2008 election.  Americans wanted change, but they did not want it to include massive new government regulations, a highly partisan Congress, backroom deals on major legislation, and a takeover of large parts of the economy.

President Obama’s January 27^th State of the Union Address raised more questions than answers.  While the national debt continues to soar past $12.3 trillion and the unemployment rate hangs at 10 percent, Americans long to hear the President offer some commonsense solutions.  Instead, the President stubbornly clings to his stagnant tax-borrow-and-spend policies.  Taxpayers don’t want to pay for another stimulus package (which will undoubtedly be stuffed with wasteful pork-barrel projects like its predecessor), nor are they fooled by the administration’s attempt to re-label it as a “jobs” bill. 

With a turnout estimated at hundreds of thousands of people, the Taxpayer March in Washington, D.C. on September 12, 2009 demonstrated the public’s support for restraining government spending.  In order to understand the motivation of the protesters, one only needs to look at the current fiscal condition of the country.