Our government spends too much, and taxes the people too much

April 7, 2024

Several weeks ago, as the April tax filing deadline neared, Facebook featured some comments about how Americans feel about taxes.

Among those comments were these: 

** The biggest scam in life: Paying taxes on money you make; taxes on money you spend; and taxes on things you own that you already paid taxes on with already taxed money.

** Paying taxes in the USA is like having a never-ending car payment on a car that won't run.

** If your country has enough money to give to illegals, your taxes are too high.

** If they can pay all these student loans, they can stop taxes on seniors!

Clearly, taxes are not popular with the American people, despite the need for the government to collect taxes to pay its bills.

Founder Benjamin Franklin in the very early days of the republic said the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. But he wasn't talking about income taxes, because they did not exist then.

In order to help pay for the Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861. Tax rates were 3 percent on income exceeding $600 and less than $10,000, and 5 percent on income exceeding $10,000. But this tax didn’t last very long. There were other income taxes of short duration.

The income tax we pay today came into existence in 1913 when the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. It was a tax on incomes of both individuals and corporations. 

As much as people dislike the taxes they must pay, they generally understand that taxes are necessary for governments at the federal, state, and local levels to operate. And here in America, with our commitment to personal freedom, those governments are expected to be lean, efficient, not overbearing, and not overly expensive.

On the federal level, those characteristics are not being followed as our Founders expected.

USA Facts tells us that the “federal government collected nearly $4.5 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2023 (FY2023). About half was collected through individual income taxes, while 37 percent was through payroll taxes. Other revenue sources included corporate income taxes, customs duties, and sales taxes.”

However, the report continues, the “federal government spent almost $6.2 trillion in FY 2023, including funds distributed to states, Medicare, Social Security, defense and veterans, transfers to states, interest on the debt, and aid to individuals such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and refundable tax credits accounted for 90 percent of spending.”

Worldometer online said that “the current population of the United States of America is 341,531,428 as of Sunday, May 5, 2024.” That’s about $13,000 in federal income collected per person. Spending, however, ran up to more than $18,000 per person.

Today, the National Debt stands at roughly $34 trillion. In 2006 the National Debt was around $8 trillion. A steady increase put it at about $23 trillion in 2020. And then the government stepped on the gas and the National Debt soared by $11 trillion in just 4 years to today’s $34 trillion. As a result, the per person amount to clear the National Debt today is more than $99,500.

The federal government is not as designed: small and limited in function. Today, it is too big, too expensive, not very efficient, and often quite over-bearing.

There are 15 executive departments and hundreds of federal agencies and commissions, employing approximately 1,427,700 federal employees, not including the military. Given the limited government philosophy of the Founders, many/most of these are not appropriate.

Which ones are needed? Here are a few of those executive branch departments that are sensible and needed: Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of the Treasury. While others may function well and sometimes provide positive guidance, are they really appropriate under the founding principles?

Why do we need a federal Department of Education to tell states how to educate the young? Why do we need the Environmental Protection Agency to tell private land owners what they can and cannot do with their own property? Why do we need a Department of Labor to tell businesses how they must operate? Under our system of federalism, these and other functions should be under control of the states, not the federal government.

In many of these departments, agencies or commissions unelected bureaucrats set rules in place with the force of law, complete with penalties. However, they are not approved by Congress, the law-making body. These bureaucrats tell the people that they work for, and who pay their salaries, what they can and cannot do, and can render punishment for them if they do not comply.

Over the decades the limited government philosophy of the Founders has fattened up and grown far beyond what it was designed to be, and what is needed and appropriate.

With every such step, the freedom of Americans becomes a little bit more limited. And if this concept continues much longer, America will no longer be the Land of the Free.

Three topics illustrating the troubled times in which we now live

** Lincoln under attack. Again.

In the string of events of erasing history, Abraham Lincoln’s name will be removed from a high school in San Francisco, California, after a committee recommended the action. 

And just what did Lincoln do, or not do, to earn this slap in the face? He did not demonstrate that black lives mattered to him.

“Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building,” said Jeremiah Jeffries, chairman of the renaming committee, and also teaches 1st grade in the school district.

This seems a little weird, even for California, where very little that happens surprises us these days. Lincoln, America’s 16th president who abolished slavery, became known as the Great Emancipator, and was an inspiration to his successors. Those included President Barack Obama, who used the Lincoln Bible for his inauguration in 2009.

“Lincoln conducted a war, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and got shot in the head for black lives, but this wasn’t enough to keep him from being unceremoniously ditched by modern social justice warriors,” wrote Jarrett Stepman in The Daily Signal.

Another area of discontent followed a Sioux uprising in Minnesota, where 303 tribesmen were sentenced to death. Lincoln reviewed their cases and removed the death sentence for 265 of them. The other 38 were hanged.

But some saw that saving only the great majority of the Sioux warriors as a Lincoln failure.

This criticism of Lincoln earned a comment from Sherry Black, who worked for more than 40 years in Native American economic and community development: “Considering the time period, it’s so difficult to understand how things were at the time. How do you make these decisions?”

That is a question that the cancel folk apparently cannot answer, and is likely a subject that has never entered into their narrow minds.

So, what are they going to name the school? Perhaps “Saul Alinsky High School.”

** Governors and mayors doing crazy stuff

As the lockdowns and other heavy restrictions continue, millions are out of a job, thousands of employers have had to permanently close their businesses, and many more may meet that same fate, if things don’t soon change.

While the intentions may be good, the results often are not. The virus can be horrible, even deadly. But, people being out of work and out of money, and other lockdown problems, have also led to much suffering, including suicides. 

And kids need to be in school. Safely, of course. But they need a productive learning environment, and virtual learning falls well short. 

Restrictions often are not sensible. People can protest in large groups, shop in large stores with lots of other people, but may only attend religious services in ridiculously small numbers. Some other restrictions on activities are just as foolish.

And then there are those that make rules, but do not themselves follow those rules. Arrogant “leaders” only compound the problems. 

People are growing tired of these authoritarian actions, that deny their constitutional rights, and render us a bunch of hostages.

** Virtual education issues

 

Like many kids across the country, a 9-year-old 4th grader in the Jefferson Parish Public Schools System in Louisiana has been doing school online from his bedroom. During an online test, his computer showed some of the things in his bedroom. His teacher saw him moving a BB gun out of the floor.

That evening, the police came and searched his house, based on the teacher’s report, and the 9-year-old was facing expulsion by the school system. 

He ended up being suspended for 3 days, as he would have been if he had actually brought a gun to school, and the school board is refusing to remove the suspension from his record.

During a hearing, the school board asked the young boy how his teacher must have felt after seeing the gun on the computer screen. “I know what a BB gun looks like,” said a former teacher and school board member. “And you know what it resembles? A real gun. OK? It resembles a real gun.” 

Perhaps this former teacher and board member does not know that owing BB guns, and other guns, is legal in our country.

An attorney representing the boy’s family, called the imposition of school-ground rules enforced in someone’s actual home as an “injustice”: “This is an injustice. It’s a systemic failure. They’re applying on-campus rules to these children, even though they’re learning virtually in their own homes.”

The state legislature passed a law named after the boy that charged that the school behaved improperly, but the school board still refused to remove the suspension from his permanent record.

The teacher, the school, and the school board have no authority to tell people what they may or may not have in their homes. The reporting of this family to the police is outrageous, and the entire affair should cost the school system a pile of money.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!