By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
It is financial tyranny.
The U.S. government, and that includes the current administration, is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and taxpayers must foot the bill for government’s fiscal insanity.
Let’s talk numbers, shall we?
The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $30 trillion and growing. That translates to roughly $242,000 per taxpayer.
Now the Joe Biden administration is proposing a $5.8 trillion spending budget that notably includes $813 billion for national defense, $30 billion to fund the police, and a plan to reduce the national deficit by roughly $1 trillion over 10 years through additional tax hikes.
It’s estimated that the amount this country owes is 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens).
The U.S. ranks as the 12th most indebted nation in the world, with much of that debt owed to the Federal Reserve, large investment funds, and foreign governments, namely, Japan and China.
Essentially, the U.S. government is funding its very existence with a credit card.
In 2021, we paid more than $562 billion in interest on that public debt, which according to journalist Rob Garver, “is more than the annual budget of every individual federal agency except for the Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services (which manages the Medicare and Medicaid government health insurance programs), and the Department of Defense.”
Clearly, the national debt isn’t going away anytime soon, especially not with government spending on the rise and interest payments making up such a large chunk of the budget.
Still, the government remains unrepentant, unfazed, and undeterred in its wanton spending.
If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the Nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.
Despite the government propaganda being peddled by the politicians and news media, however, the government isn’t spending our tax dollars to make our lives better.
We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.
“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in the United States.
Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely suspect wrongdoing. And the IRS insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.
We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but we’re being forced to pay through the nose, anyhow.
We have no real say, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to provide funds for the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.
If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your property and your money, you’re not free.
Although we’re struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this doesn’t include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines, and other fiscal penalties), the government continues to do whatever it likes, levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly, with little thought for the plight of its citizens.
To top it all off, all of those wars the U.S. is so eager to fight abroad are being waged with borrowed funds. Of course, taxpayers will have to repay the borrowed debt.
For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9/11 for the military industrial complex’s costly, endless so-called “war on terrorism.”
Mind you, that staggering $6 trillion is only a portion of what the Pentagon spends on America’s military empire.
The United States spends more on foreign aid than any other nation. Forbes reports, “U.S. foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually.”
Most recently, in response to Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, the Biden administration approved $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, with an additional $200 million for immediate military assistance.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in a 1953 speech, this is how the military industrial complex will continue to get richer, while the American taxpayer will be forced to pay for programs that do little to enhance lives, ensure happiness and well-being, or secure freedoms.
It is no way of life.
Yet it’s not just the government’s endless wars that are bleeding us dry.
We’re being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to provide funds for schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply.
It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.
There are a few things we can do (demand transparency, reject cronyism, and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people), but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.
Trust me, we’re all in the same boat, folks, and there’s only one real life preserver: That’s the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The Constitution starts with those three powerful words: “We the people.”
There is power in our numbers.
I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, that remains our greatest strength in the face of a governmental elite that continues to ride roughshod over the populace. It remains our greatest defense against a government that has claimed for itself unlimited power over the purse (taxpayer funds) and the sword (military might).
Where we lose out is when we fall for the big-talking politicians who spend big at our expense.
—The Rutherford Institute