Federal Budget

Before the latest proposed bail-out of Wall Street, here is what we were dealing with as a nation: United States Federal Budget. These are the things our Congress and President have committed to spending and generally do spend each year. Some expenses are discretionary and some mandated like Social Security.

The budgets, so far as I can determine, have yet to include the cost of the war in Iraq and probably not the costs we will be accruing for years to come in terms of increased Veteran Health problems. They also were put together before the latest proposal to bail out the stock market.

There are other sites that also explain it but they are not so easy to understand, like: US Budget. You can go from there to find individual departments and what they were budgeted for 2008.

Here is another site to help you see what we have been borrowing: U.S. National Debt Clock. To get some perspective on this, $.22 of every dollar of taxes goes to interest on this debt and it will rise as the debt rises. Senator McCain suggests that we can solve this problem with earmarks but they were a small part of the budget and some of them were for items that need solutions like bridges to somewhere.

Think about this problem in a logical sense for a minute. If an economic adviser was looking at your home expenses and you said you were paying $.22 of every dollar of income on interest but not paying down the principle, what would they say to you? How much leeway does this give our government to work on any problems anywhere?

With the stock market taking another nose dive, major financial institutions have proven deregulation doesn't work where it comes to money and it never has. The supposed capitalist manifesto, Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith was not about totally unregulated capitalism allowing the greedy free rein.

Smith wrote: " It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." He referred to this as rational self-interest-- something we haven't been seeing much of in these markets. When you kill the golden goose, there are no more eggs-- unless you can talk someone else into handing them to you.

There are two key provisions in our Constitution about federal responsibility and one is regulating commerce. Who forgot about that? Somebody not paying attention? Or did they financially benefit in their forgetting? Don't forget how lobbyists have grown in numbers just since Bush got in office.

Right now, we are as individuals facing one heck of a mess-- as will our next president. We have to worry about our own investments, our salaries, loans, our family member or neighbor who is losing their home or out of work, and then what happens if the country cannot continue to borrow from the rest of the world?

Currently the United States borrows the bulk from the Federal Reserve. They are certainly making a tidy profit; so long as we can continue paying that interest-- and that doesn't pay anything down. A lot of people listened to Cheney when he said the debt was insignificant. Our grandchildren will find their options as a people far less because of what they have inherited from their insolvent parents.

The talk goes that Democrats increase the debt, obviously proven false by when it has grown biggest. The question I was left with is-- who benefits from this debt? Who is profiting from it? My best guess is it's not those welfare moms that some Republicans worry so much about.

Chart from: zfacts

Whoever becomes president in January will inherit some nasty problems on a federal and domestic level. If the American people expect a band-aid response to those problems, the end result will keep escalating and being pushed into the future, but it cannot be ignored forever.

Sacrifice was denied even after 9/11. Go shopping! That's still the answer with the government's $600 rebate to most families. What can $600 buy? Go get a new DVD player and find out. Suppose the government had used that money in another way and put it into our crumbling infrastructure, done the kinds of projects we can't individually finance-- maybe rebuilt more bridges before they collapsed, improved our rail lines or airports?

One of the things that helped a lot of families during the depression was work projects, which we still have as benefits today all around the country. Projects like that provide jobs but also leave us with something real for our money. Oh yeah, I know a DVD player is real too-- until it gets replaced by newer technology and ends up in the garbage dump.

Investment in infrastructure is what we see in other countries that are sometimes surpassing us for the quality of their lives. It's something that Republicans often argue is the duty of the private sector. Fine, do you want to pay to use that new freeway every time you turn onto it? Tolls for the bridges? There are many ways to pay taxes and a lot of them have a profit tucked in for somebody else.

[Update or should that be downdate: The vote today on the bail-out leaves me depressed. From the sounds of this, from Kos, this bail out will give wall street what it wanted and leave main street holding the bag. Typical.

Yes, I get it.Without this we head for a depression. I understand the banks are saying without this, they will crash, but explain why those who failed should get fat cat salaries? To me this just delays something worse coming and with the government having less money to handle it.

I operate on logic and to me this bill doesn't sound logical but is likely to be voted through on fear mostly by Democrats... ugh! A depression will be bad. Loss of our stock market investments will be bad, but does this do anything but delay when that happens? The government, with a population unwilling or able to pay more taxes, cannot keep going into this kind of debt forever!]