We're already on the hook for about a half million dollars
per household just to pay for the unfunded liabilities in Social
Security and Medicare, according to David M. Walker,
former comptroller general of the
United States and head of the Government Accountability Office
from 1998 to 2008.
"The Peterson Foundation calculated the federal government
accumulated $56.4 trillion in total liabilities and unfunded
promises for Medicare and Social Security as of September 30,
2008," states Walker, president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson
Foundation. "The numbers used to calculate this figure come
directly from the audited financial statements of the U.S.
government."
Explains Walker, breaking down this liability to per family
and per capita levels, "If $56.4 trillion in financial
commitments is too big a number to digest, think of it as
$483,000 per American household, or
$184,000 for every man, woman and child in the country."
Actually, it's double that, more like $1 million per
household, for the top half of the nation's income earners who
pick up the lion's share of the federal tab. For tax year 2007,
the Internal Revenue Service reports
that the top 50 percent of income earners paid 97.11 percent of
total amount collected in income taxes.
Digging deeper and faster into this fiscal hole, President
Obama's proposed budget raises the nation's level of red ink by
record-breaking amounts over the next 10 years.
"The proposed budget over the
next decade would rack up $45.8 trillion in new spending, $9.1
trillion in deficits and more than $2 trillion in higher taxes on
Americans," states Investor's
Business Daily.
"It will double the national debt held by the public to over $18
trillion, while raising taxes on 3.2 million small businesses and
upper income taxpayers -- the
very people the administration is
counting on to pull us out of recession."
Obama's big idea is that we can
beg and borrow our way to an America with more windmills, tinier
cars, costlier schools and more jobs, all while making things
more equal by taking more money
out of the pockets of the people who create the
jobs.
"Jobs will be our number
one focus in 2010 and we're going to start where most new
jobs do, with small business," explained Obama last week. "Small
businesses have created roughly 65
percent of all new jobs over the past decade and a half and I
think we should make it easier for them to open their doors and
hire more workers."
And making it "easier" is somehow supposed to be in tune
with his call for higher income taxes on the top two brackets,
new health insurance mandates, higher taxes on dividends,
more unionism, higher inheritance
taxes, and higher energy costs via cap-and-trade.
On just the income
tax proposal, the Tax Foundation estimates that Obama's
proposed tax increase on the top two income brackets would amount
to a $30 billion annual tax hike on the
owners of small businesses.
Explains Susan Eckerly, senior
vice president of the National Federation of Independent
Business, the nation's leading small business organization,
linking the agenda of Obama and the
Democrats in Congress to the lack of job growth, "Until small
businesses are confident that Washington will not increase the
cost of doing business through higher taxes,
healthcare mandates and increased energy
costs, small business owners will continue to stay on the
sidelines when it comes to hiring and expanding their
businesses."
The result? Unsustainable debt
and a botched recovery.
topics:
Federal Budget, Entitlements, Unfunded Liabilities
