What Is Government For? Can We Do Better?
- By Simple Politiks
- 3 August, 2012
- 30 Comments
This is going to be one of my few open ended posts. I don’t want to put too much opinion into this piece, only facts, and I’ll leave it up to you to comment/make a final decision for yourself. I encourage everyone to leave a comment, I’d really like to know what you think of this predicament.
As all of you know, the U.S. government is having the worst debt problem in its entire history. We are over 16 trillion dollars in debt, we’ve lost our triple A credit rating and deficits are not decreasing so debt is still rising. There are many states that are suffering from huge deficits as well. The reason our government is having deficit problems is, to put it simply, it is spending too much. On what, you may ask?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
There are various tables provided in the link. Three tables I looked at were numbers 15.2, 15.4, and 15.6.
Here is the budget for fiscal year 2011. You can compare it to previous years and this year’s estimations if you’d like. There are some fairly large programs in our budget that take up the larger chunks of cash. Social security, medicare/medicaid, and the military are some of the biggest. All of these programs help to make our country great, that much is unmistakable. However, the cost is also unmistakable, and I fear we are approaching a very difficult situation. Let me show you what I mean with the data from 2011:
** All numbers are in billions of American dollars **
Total Federal Government Spending: 3644.8
Federal Deficit: 1,299.6
Which means our Total Revenue for 2011 was: 2345.2
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Okay. So we took in 2345.2 billion dollars in 2011. Now I’m going to cut everything out of our Federal Budget except for Social Security and Medicare, Military (domestic and international defense), and the interest on the debt.
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Social Security and Medicare: 1282.5
Defense and International: 751.3Interest on the Debt: 271.7
Grand Total: 2305.5
Which means that these government programs (with the interest on the debt) are roughly 40 billion dollars away from putting our nation into a deficit. This is disregarding the other programs which in 2011 totaled over a trillion dollars. During a time of great debt interest rate! Which, by the way, will not be low forever. Here is a video made in 2012. If you’re reading this post then you have to watch the video to fully grasp this concept.
Unfortunately the interest rate on the debt is the sole obligation that can truly be controlled out of the three. It’ll be damn tough, but it can be diminished and eventually excluded. Social Security and Medicare, however, are not controllable at all. As the population increases, the required expenses also increase. And population will not decline anytime in the foreseeable future. It will only grow, causing our expenses to increase disproportionately faster than the government’s own revenue. So at some point even reforms won’t be able to fix the deficit situation we’re currently in. And when you factor in every other program and department that our government funds, the biggest obviously being the military (and boy, good luck telling a Republican to cut the military budget!), it’s hard to imagine how we can promise balanced budgets a generation or two from now. Perhaps incredibly high taxes will be able to stall the government for time, but I can’t imagine anyone who would be happy about that. It may be necessary down the road…
All of this brings us back to the initial question.
What is government for?
Is it the government’s responsibility to provide social security? What about a military financed with substantially more money than many civilized nations combined? Or health care? Or the poor? Or education, the arts, college student loans? And all of the other little things that government provides for! There are also taxes, should the government allow a system that favors the rich? Maybe the poor because they have the least amount of money and they truly need it… I don’t know. I’m just trying to throw as many ideas around as possible.
Whatever you think government is responsible for, you always need to ask yourself the essential follow-up question:
Can we do better?
No matter what type of system you favor, the correct answer is a nice big “HELL YEAH WE CAN”. For example: our government has been around for over 200 years and we’re still trying to figure out how to structure it. If you don’t think that we can do better by making our programs more efficient, then you’re incredibly short-sighted; our programs are beginning to fail in their current condition. We need to make our programs as efficient as possible in order to hold off the growing deficits and debt.
So what do we do?
We’re in a pretty interesting situation right now. I’ve gotta say… I’m not exactly confident about my generation’s future…
Any ideas?
Copyright © 2013
Hi. Thanks for the ‘like’ and ‘follow’. They brought me to yours; very interesting. I haven’t yet made many comments on politics though I’ve got the menu heading ready. Having arrived in Romania on the day of the referendum to replace the ‘suspended President’, all I can say is I’ve seen some political farces in the UK but never anything like this. I’ll be reading your blog with interest when I’ve more time than in a very short trip to Romania.
Start by firing the useless idiot in the White House this November 2012.
Re:: john’s comment. And replace him with an even more useless idiot? For the simple minded, this problem is larger than your oversimplified partisanship.
Barney is right, the problem is bigger than Obama or Romney. They’re just a small piece in this.
Just a suggestion from one member of an older generation to yours – we couldn’t do it but you need to take the money of of politics.
Until you do – ‘What is Government for’ will be directed by those who contribute ($$$) the most – NOT who ‘morally’ needs it.
We can do better but only when it becomes ‘public service’ again instead of special interest.
Great post!
Hope you don’t mind a reblog.
I couldn’t agree more about the money problem in government. The unfortunate side effect to increasing the size of government is an increased potential for corruption. More special interest groups to serve… I have high hopes for government becoming a public service once again, but I don’t think it will happen for quite some time.
Thank you! I would love a reblog!
Reblogged this on The Last Of The Millenniums and commented:
Great post and a very interesting blog.
My suggestion:
Stop shifting to governmen agencies the responsibilities we should.be fulfilling ourselves, simply out of common decency. It’s VERY easy and low risk to establish some sort of program to care for the poor, sick, and elderly. Hand over money to a bunch of folks who somehow get a fraction of it to those who need. And if it doesn’t work, well, we can then shift the blame to ineffiecient government, corrupt politics, spending too much, not spending enough, etc., without having to take ownership ourselves.
Seriously, turn the wayback machine back to the fifities…you got a sick granny? You take her in to your home and care for her…nowadays we’re too busy keeping up with the Jones so we shunt granny off to some facility or we sponsor social security, medic-aid, or whatnot… Really easy then to shift the blame “Government doesn’t care for the elderly” when the real issue is staring us in the face.
The same scenario pans out to poor people in your neighborhood, families who are facing financial problems, etc…. Instead of stepping up and taking care of each other, we tell some nebulous govefnment agency to do it and then go about our own little comfortable lives.
Check over at my blog…the answer is really easy…if you truly believe in the mandate to care for “the least of these”, why are we so obsessessed with telling OTHERS to do it?
As for the military…well, tell me again why we have military bases all over the world even in places where there are no enemies and no conflicts… Yeah, defend the country…but do we REALLY need a military base in Guam? But that gets into an uncomfortable truth that, as much as we pay lip service against countries bent on world domination, guess what…we already are one of those countries… How about we go home and fix our own fences before we try and fix everyone else? But, again, the answer is in some odd sense of moral superiority and responsibility on a government level… We see oppression in another country. He, that’s Bad! Let’s send in some marines to fix it.
Okay…enough ranting…thanks for the thought provoking post.
God bless!
Government, IMHO, should be there for purposes of defending basic human rights — all of them. The sad part is that Americans are probably the most ignorant people on the planet in terms of what those rights actually are, and how they are determined/justified. Thus the ridiculous fights over the process of being the last country in the industrialized world to enact health care protection for all of its residents. The failure goes back to the education system being criminally neglected in the past generation (a human rights abuse in itself).
OK, back down from my soap box…
Nice virtually meeting you, BTW,
David H.
Reblogged this on Sheeki86.
hey thanks for liking my post & following my blog
My pleasure!
I feel that spending on the 3 sectors mentioned by you is justified. Which leaves the government with no option other that to look at increasing its revenue. Increasing Direct Taxes Rates is not the solution. The aim should be creating more wealth in the country which will increase the number of people contributing towards the revenue in the form of taxes. Job creation is the way to enable this and outsourcing of jobs in the last couple of decades has really hurt the U.S. Government policies must plug the export of jobs and getting manufacturing back to the country. The focus should not be on cutting spending as much as it should be on increasing revenue by creating nation’s wealth.
Thanks for the concise reply! Appreciate it.
Did you forget to subtract $928.5 billion for defense, where you say ” Now I’m going to cut everything out of our federal budget except…..”??
No, I subtracted defense as well. Medicare/medicaid, social security (as well as other pensions), and the interest on the debt put the nation into a deficit by themselves. Which is incredibly troublesome.
Thanks. Guess I just misread the stats…
Not a problem!
Hey SP! Let’s take this in steps.
Government exists to promote the welfare — that is, the well-being — of the nation’s citizenry. This includes leveraging the power of pooled funds to meet shared needs (i.e. collecting taxes and spending them for the public good), as well as resolving disputes (legal system), and protecting the rights of all. There is no inherent reason why a government should, or should not, become involved in a particular sphere of American life. Questions like “Should the government play a larger role in providing health care” are practical questions, not ideological or Constitutional ones. The answer is, always, whatever is best for the people.
Now the numbers:
I’m guessing that your source for these numbers was http://www.usfederalbudget.us. It’s important to cite that source, because it’s not an especially objective or trustworthy one. It’s a site designed to promote Tea Party ideas and candidates. Not surprisingly, the pie chart on the site is compiled and labeled in extremely misleading ways.
I’m not saying this as a Tea Party detractor. I’m saying it as somebody who worked as a budget analyst for California’s Employment Development Department. I was personally responsible for tracking approximately $80 million in government spending annually. If I’d turned in a pie chart like that one, I would have been fired.
For example, Social Security is bundled under “Pensions.” Here’s why: people like Social Security, but it’s very expensive. People don’t like government employees, particularly retired ones, but those costs are actually quite low relative to everything else in the budget. By calling Social Security “pensions,” you disguise the popular kid as the nerdy loner.
Not counting military retirements, which aren’t supposed to be paid for by federal employees paying into a retirement fund, our net loss was only $22 billion — exactly what you’d expect to happen when government shrinks, the population ages, and there are fewer current employees. Many former employees, from periods of larger government are still around.
It gets worse. The only listed offsets are these retirement contributions from federal employees. Huh? What happened to all the money taxpayers contribute to Social Security? Sure, it’s running into a deficit as baby boomers age, but the entire thing is not a deficit. In this graphic, Social Security is a pension when it’s a cost, and it’s magically not a pension when it’s a tax.
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As for the expenses listed under the loaded term like “welfare”…where to even begin? For example, the biggest line item in the category “Social exclusion n.e.c.” (meaning Not Elsewhere Considered) is the Earned Income Tax Credit. How, exactly, is offering a tax deduction to people who find and maintain employment welfare? It shouldn’t be a line item anywhere unless you are going to get into every deduction and tax credit on the books, the majority of which benefit wealthy taxpayers and corporations. That’s why they’ve hidden it under the boring-looking “miscellaneous” category of Not Elsewhere Considered.
Also included under NEC is money spent on Adoption and Foster Care Assistance, totaling 8.3 billion dollars. This is certainly surprising, considering that a category called “Family and Children” is right there under “Welfare.” But it’s also not surprising, because unwanted pregnancies that don’t result in an abortion either lead to adoption or else to state care and, ultimately, foster care. You don’t want people clicking on “Family and Children,” and getting distracted by a line item that (if they’re pro-life, as many people visiting this site would be) they’re basically obligated to accept. You want that cost folded invisibly into “welfare,” so that “Family and Children” only shows aid given to the poor, conjuring images of welfare mothers and octomoms.
Another example: workers’ compensation. First off, this includes disability insurance, which isn’t correct. Disability insurance for someone with MS is not “workers’ compensation.” However, what I find most amazing is the 5.3 billion dollars included in this category that were paid to rail workers receiving a pension. It literally says “Pension Fund” right in the title. Why not add it to “Pensions”? Because that chunk already looked fine — let’s beef up Workers’ Compensation to make it look like another one of those bleeding-heart programs the nation cannot afford!
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I’ll stop there, because I think you get the point. This chart is not factual or analytical; it’s extremely unscrupulous propaganda. It is designed to agree superficially with the facts, so it hides its fudges within submenus (within submenus, and on and on, sometimes extending four layers deep).
Two final comments in passing:
1. Costs like unemployment insurance definitely do fluctuate. There are things we can do about them, such as stimulating the economy and re-training workers. We could even begin to pay for this by simply regulating corporate outsourcing and collecting already owed taxes on outsourced production, none of which is currently being done.
2. I do not consider it my place to tell experts, or families in crisis, how to do their jobs. I don’t think commenter Robert Martin has the slightest idea why we have a military base in Guam, what its positional and strategic importance might be, or whether it is expendable. Perhaps so, but I don’t base my positions on government spending on that sort of uninformed, off-the-cuff example. The same goes for his charming remark about people with a “sick granny.” He clearly doesn’t know what it is like to care for a disabled, elderly person recovering from a stroke, or who has Alzheimer’s, or failing kidneys, or severe emphysema or osteoporosis. If he did, I doubt he would be so certain that the costs we bear nationwide, for in-home care and assisted living environments, are somehow signs of laziness.
[...] for information about the 2011 federal budget. What follows is from a comment I left over at Simple Politiks. He’s a nice, earnest guy; his is really the first political blog I’ve read since I got [...]
Lincoln (whom I do not like, respect, or admire) put it succinctly:
democracy, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.
But what we have almost everywhere is actually “government of the people, by the party, for the party” … and therein lies our problem.
Solution?
Dead simple: get rid of party politics by outlawing all parties (wait, hear me out). Instead of political hacks as the purely nominal ‘representatives’ of their electorates, have instead Independent hacks.
But wait, it gets better: independents with NO vote (or power) in the House other than as directed by their own electorate.
Couple the above with a system of Binding Citizens’ Initiated Referendums and you get a genuine democracy which empowers the individual Citizen; so making him/her responsible for and accountable to him/herself.
The sole purpose of the government (that’s every enfranchised voter) is to ensure the Rights of the Individual Citizen (described and defined in a Bill Of Rights and Constitution—but not like any BOR or C you know at present).
Oh … you’ll need real money too …
Interesting write up!
thanks for looking and liking my blog! Oh and following! I appreciate it. I’m not very political but your’s is very interesting.
No problem, I’m glad you like it!
I like your blog very much. Thanks for raising the issues and following my blog. On this, we have to start with passing some form of Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Plan. The Gang of Six tried last year, yet they did not get sufficient voice. I spoke to some compromises under “My Bill is Better than Your Bill” under musingsofanoldfart.wordpress.com among several others posts that would let us not throw water on the slow recovery and address a couple of other major issues. One of the other keys that government plays which is not noted, but is very much a part of our history, is the public/ private partnerships with private capital which facilitate innovation and major projects. When people say government does not create private sector jobs, our history says this is not true. An interesting fact per Wikipedia, is the jobs have increased twice as much under Democratic Presidential terms (over 70 million in 10 3/4 terms) than GOP terms (around 35 million over 12 terms). This is one of the key tenets of Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum’s book “That used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World it Created and How it can come Back.” We have to promote innovation on these shores and keep the jobs to execute the innovation here. Again, great post.
Thanks for the great comment, you brought up very relevant points. It was my pleasure to follow your blog!
[...] recently wrote What Is Government For? Can We Do Better?, which touched on the budget problem we are facing. While I was looking around on Facebook I [...]
Nice post! Let’s get rid of the General Services Administration (GSA), a fraudulent and unnecessary federal agency that does not help the public or the federal agencies it claims to support. I say, let’s start there.
You seem to imply in this post that we lost our Triple A credit rating because of our debt. We didn’t. We lost it because of the debacle over raising the debt limit which signaled to our creditors that we might not be trustworthy enough to make our payments. An entire group of folks seemed hell-bent on trashing our credit rating for party politics so it isn’t exactly a surprise that we took the hit.
I don’t think there’s anything simple about the issues we face, but I think it’s absurd to think that one can run a government the way a family handles their budget. Even families borrow money (mortgage, car, student loans). Crying out about our debt load? Letting the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone would go a long way to remedying the problem.
What an interesting debate. Here in the UK we are equally dissatisfied with the system we currently have and the disconnection between the rulers and the ruled. The coalition government preaches what it calls localism, but when local elected councils reach a decision, if the central government thinks they have reached the wrong decision they send an unelected nobody to overturn it. It is hardly a surprise that more and more people are not bothering to register to vote, which makes everything worse… or perhaps that is the coalition’s objective! Best wishes to everyone, Paul of Gay Activist