Big Government's Impact on Me

I recently read an article telling how the Tea Party is complaining about the wrong things. Examples were given of all the good things government has done for us. When I say government, I mean the Federal Government, the central government, those guys and gals in Washington DC that are sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Next, the question was posed about how our government does or does not impact our daily lives. The writer clearly stated that government has not significantly impacted his life.

I beg to differ. Every time I hear a commercial on the radio paid for by some federal agency telling me how to “protect” myself from something, I am impacted. How? Because my tax money is being used to tell me to check out this or that on a government web site. Or, that I should “make a plan, be informed” about what to do in an emergency. Or perhaps that wearing a seatbelt will save my life. That is simply not the job of the federal government! Those rights, powers, responsibilities are not mandated to the federal government in the Constitution. Look at the government’s record of problem solving over the last one hundred years. It has thrown trillions of dollars at problems and most of them are still not solved.

Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society poured billions out to eliminate poverty and preclude recurrence of the Watts Riots of 1965. That riot is viewed by some as a reaction to the record of police brutality by the LAPD and other racial injustices suffered by black Americans in Los Angeles, including job and housing discrimination. Twenty seven years later we had the LA Riots of 1992 which were said to have been caused for the same reasons. What happened to all the money spent by the federal government to solve the problem? We still have poverty and we still have race problems. Perhaps the solutions have more to do with morality and individual responsibility than with money. Of course, there is an entire segment of people and organizations that make their living by promoting poverty and racial prejudice as problems requiring more government regulation and intervention. That is more government money.

Then there is the issue of bailouts. Bailout means using our money to save people who make bad business mistakes. The federal government has been assuming the responsibility of bailing out private corporations since the 1970s. Early on there was Penn Central Railroad, Lockheed and Franklin National Bank. Then an irresponsible administration in New York City needed the federal safety net. More recently, the federal government has bailed out Bear Sterns ($30 Billion), Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac ($400 B), AIG ($180 B), Auto Industry ($25 B), TARP ( $700 B*), Citigroup ($280 B) and Bank of America ($142.2 B). Please keep in mind that these occurred during both Democrat and Republican administrations. Does this impact you and me? Let me count the ways.

After enactment of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 the federal government began collecting taxes on income. Initially, rates on income taxation were from 1% to 7%. Within a few years the rate went as high as 77%. Can you imagine that? And during the Great Depression when the federal government was supposed to be solving our problems the highest tax rate was between 63% and 79% until WWII when it hit over 90%. The minimum tax rate had been 2% but it shot up to 22%. One might think that after WWII the rate would have declined, but that is not the case. Our tax rate remained at those wartime rates until the early 1960s. One can only speculate that our chief executives and our legislators had found the key to power and a very nice living. Our money became THEIR money. The more money THEY had to dole out the more power they acquired.

The federal government has been expanding since 1913. Not just through the addition of agencies and employees but also through control, power and influence on every American family. The reasoning: Private industry and private citizens can not be trusted to “do the right thing.” Big Brother must monitor, guide and, if necessary, control how we manage our lives. And it is always necessary!

Do we really need a Department of Education “which funds part of the cost of local schools?” Education is not one of the enumerated responsibilities of the federal government under our Constitution. The federal government can encourage education, but should not be funding it. Why should taxpayers in Nevada be paying for schools in New Jersey. New Jersey happens to have one of the highest cost per capita education rates in the country, and education in that state is notoriously poor. Someone has duped voters into believing that more money equals improved education. It just is not so! The Department of Education is part of the problem -- not part of the solution.

Why do Tea Party groups rail against the IRS? Because it represents a federally mandated extortion from every American family. And it is our own fault. We have too long neglected our responsibility to elect right thinking members of congress to represent us. We, the middle class, hard working, tax paying citizens have been so busy being good citizens and paying our mortgages that we have given away our government to political opportunists. We never marched in protest because we were too busy being responsible. Who did the protesting? Those who profited from the big lie that they could not survive without Big Brother’s support. So, we gave our money and the government used it to promote its own agenda of redistribution of the wealth. Oh, it is not a new thing recently invented. It has only recently been called what it is.

Progressives have been at work for over one hundred years. The history of our tax rates is only part of the story. Their goal is to level the playing field by penalizing those who build the businesses, create the jobs and promote innovation. These people are seen as enemies of the state. The heroes are those who will help big government to make mediocrity the rule and look to it for the solutions rather than looking to God and to their own determination.


*Check this site for details on the TARP recipients. http://bailout.propublica.org/initiatives/2-emergency-economic-stabilization-act