"Debt Tax" Throttles Local Priorities
"DEBT TAX" THROTTLES LOCAL PRIORITIES
By Congressman Mike Thompson
We have the money this year to fix our roads, provide our veterans with the health care we promised them and ensure every child in our area has a hot lunch and supervised place to go after school.
Unfortunately it will be spent on paying the interest on our $6.3 trillion national debt instead of actually improving the lives of a single local resident.
The next time you are stuck in traffic or you can't see your doctor, consider these facts:
We spend $1 billion a day, every day, just paying the interest charges on our nation's credit card.
$180 of every $1,000 Americans pay in income taxes is due to the interest incurred on our rising national debt.
Every taxpayer pays $2,500 per year in a "debt tax" - a tax that can't be repealed by a vote.
Much of the interest we pay on our national debt goes directly to foreign investors.
The result is the equivalent of a family only paying the monthly interest charge on a maxed-out credit card that has an
18% interest rate.
Our nation's credit card is on course to hit its borrowing limit of $6.4 trillion on February 20th. So what's a cash-
strapped nation to do?
The federal budget released by the White House this week asks Congress to raise the debt limit and spend more of the same money we don't have. A mall-crazed teenager couldn't be more proud of their government, wondering why their parents can't be more like our president.
The administration's $2.3 trillion budget includes a $15 billion increase in military spending, $400 billion in new spending to privatize Medicare drug benefits and a $670 billion tax cut that will save the average American less than $100.
The increases add up to a new record deficit of $307 billion, eclipsing the previous $290 billion set in 1992. And that doesn't include the cost of a possible war in Iraq that is estimated to cost $100 billion or more depending on how many years US forces will have to remain in the region.
Nor does it include the $175 billion this year's budget "borrows" from our Social Security Trust Fund, just 5 years before the baby boomer tidal wave begins to retire.
White House budget officials have warned Congress that this year's spending blueprint will result in 4 more years of record deficits.
There hasn't been a worse time in our nation's history for deficit spending.
Forty-eight states are drowning in red ink. Forty-three are facing their worst fiscal crisis since World War II. Twenty-four say they will be forced to raise taxes on everything from gasoline to professional services just to comply with unfunded federal mandates. Unlike the federal government, all but one state-Vermont-are required by their constitutions to end their budget year with a surplus. Oregon this month started releasing its prisoners early. Counties and cities are looking to raise fees just to provide basic services.
It's as if those in Washington who are pushing spending increases and federal tax cuts believe there is a magical federal taxpayer who is somehow different than the guy who also pays state and local taxes. Memo to DC: It's not only the
same pair of pants, it's the same pocket.
A friend suggested we just cut the fat. Unfortunately, we could cut every penny of non-defense discretionary spending that Congress is allowed to cut, including the entire $53 billion budget for schools, $28 billion for veterans, $13 billion for highway improvements and $66 billion for health care and still not have enough to pay for this year's deficit.
When presidents talk of war, they historically talk about a spirit of shared sacrifice. Sacrifice shouldn't mean tax cuts and increased spending so our children have to pay our bills through a "debt tax" they won't be able to afford. One or the other has to give.
Those who may believe we can spend our way out of debt either have willful amnesia of the 1980's or, as Milton Berle might have suggested, are living on the wrong side of a one-track mind.