Government Reality...

….The Problem….

Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve keep trying to convince us all that we are in an economic recovery and yet the number of Americans on food stamps has surpassed the 44 million mark for the first time ever.

During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

As 2010 came to an end, 96 departing members of the U.S. House of Representatives awarded millions of dollars in extra pay to their staffers and aides as they closed down their offices. Keep in mind that this was U.S. taxpayer money that was being spent. The Wall Street Journal described what happened this way….The 96 lawmakers paid their employees $6.7 million, or 31%, more in the fourth quarter of 2010 than they did, on average, in the first three quarters of the year.

Clueless

A perfect example that shows just how clueless our leaders are about the deindustrialization of America occurred recently when U.S. Senator John McCain claimed that iPods and iPhones are made in the United States.

Taxation

Back in 1913, the federal tax code was a whopping 400 pages long. If you lived back then, would you have had enough time to read the whole thing? Perhaps. Well, today the federal tax code is approximately 70,000 pages long. The Tax Policy Center has found that to raise income taxes to try to close the deficit would necessitate a top tax rate of 77 percent, which economists say would significantly hamper productivity. A 2009 study by the Tax Policy Center that found that 47 percent of Americans have no income tax liability.

Us Education

The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.

Poverty Rate

Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

Unemployment Rate

The unemployment rate in the United States was last reported at 9.1 percent in August of 2011. From 1948 until 2010 the United States’ Unemployment Rate averaged 5.70 percent reaching an historical high of 10.80 percent in November of 1982 and a record low of 2.50 percent in May of 1953.  From 2008 to 2009, the number of unemployed people in America increased by 60 percent from 8.9 to 14.3 million.

Home Foreclosures

The bleakest year in foreclosure crisis has only just begun.  Lenders are poised to take back more homes this year than any other since the U.S. housing meltdown began in 2006.   ”2011 is going to be the peak,” said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at foreclosure tracker RealtyTrac Inc. The firm predicts 1.2 million homes will be repossessed this year by lenders.

Homeless in US

In a recent approximation USA Today estimated 1.6 million people unduplicated persons used transitional housing or emergency shelters.  Of these people, approximately 1/3 are members of households with children, a nine percent increase since 2007.  Another approximation is from a study done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty which states that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year.

Health Insurance

Employers’ spending on health coverage for workers spiked abruptly this year, with the average cost of a family plan rising by 9 percent, triple the growth seen in 2010.Family plan premiums hit $15,073 on average, while coverage for single employees grew 8 percent to $5,429, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust. Workers paid an average of $921 toward the premium of single coverage and $4,129 for family plans.

Federal Deficit

The federal government has run a deficit every year since 1969, with the exception of the years between 1998 and 2001. The government is expected to run a fiscal year 2011 deficit of $1.4 trillion

Between 2011 and 2020, interest payments on the debt, adjusted for inflation, will nearly triple – spiking from $210 billion to $627 billion. This is a best-case scenario, predicated on maintaining low interest rates and no further deficit creating government spending.

By 2020, interest payments and entitlement programs (such as Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid) will consume 90 percent of projected federal revenues, or 90 cents out of every tax dollar. This means just ten percent of the budget will be left to fund all other government functions: from providing for defense and homeland security to education and the environment.

….The Solution….

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.  Declaration of Independence

Additional Reading:  American Thinker           International Liberty         The Breath-Taking Incompetence of Our American Government          Our Incompetent Government

It’s time to wake up, people…This decline in the rights and quality of life for Americans citizens is being destroyed .

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