The hurt among grassroots Americans was profound when George Bush reneged on the most famous campaign promise of this generation. While most of the faithful avoided recriminations, the liberal Democrats and their media pals taunted him: was he lying when he said “read my lips” in 1988 or is he just like all the other cynical politicians who think that campaign promises are (as liberal Republican Wendell Willkie once said) just “campaign oratory”?
When President Bush answered this question with “read my lips,” he revealed an elitist disdain for the Americans who elected him. His remark was crude, insulting, unbecoming to the prestige of the office he holds, and he owes the American people an apology.
The new budget “compromise” being worked out by the White House and the liberal Democrats in Congress is substantially the same as the one that was defeated a couple of weeks ago. Not only doesn’t it contain any real budget cuts, but it includes at least $100 billion in increased spending.
If Congress does nothing at all, economic growth and inflation will bring an additional $70 to $80 billion a year into the U.S. Treasury. But that doesn’t satisfy the tax-greedy Congressmen, and they won’t apply that increase to reducing the federal deficit.
It’s obvious that the “powers that be,” namely, the White House and the liberal Democratic majority in Congress, are trying to sock it to the American taxpayers instead of addressing the problem of government spending out of control. While the American taxpayers are admonished to submit to paying more taxes, the Congressmen will increase their own pay on January 1 from $96,6000 to $120,800.
The Bush Administration and Congress also negotiated a pay raise of 4.1 percent for federal workers starting in January, plus automatic raises for the next three years, extra pay for those living in expensive cities, and generous benefits. Of course, there is no talk of a hiring freeze on government employees or the elimination of unnecessary jobs.
Unknown to most taxpayers is a special bank account of $182.7 billion called the “discretionary” fund reserved by Congress to spend on its pet projects as directed by the powerful chairmen of the House and Senate money committees. You guessed it – absolutely no cuts will be allowed in this “discretionary” fund.
For example, the budget deal includes a massive new appropriation for federal daycare. The liberals are determined to embark on a giant new federal baby-sitting program which its advocates admit will ultimately grow into a $100 billion-a-year entitlement grab bag.
Here are some of the items in the $100 billion of increased spending for which the American people are being asked to pay higher taxes: $25 million for the electrification of the rail line between New Haven and Boston, $30 million to study magnetic levitation trains and “intelligent” cars, and $1 million to develop a “national transportation policy” on bicycling and walking.
Other items of new spending include money to study global warming and the health impact of high power transmission lines, a 19 percent increase in the Environmental Protection Agency appropriation, more money for the space program, and increased funding for the search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and for exotic journeys to meet up with a comet and visit Saturn later in the decade.
The increase spending goes on and on: $1 billion more than last year for education programs for the disadvantaged, money for 10,000 more public housing units, $243 million more for the Super Collider, a 13 percent increase in NASA’s budget, $2 billion for the research and treatment of AIDS, and an increased appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts to reward it for funding indecent and sacrilegious works.
All this is increased spending over and above the current year. Of course, the budget includes all the usual pork barrel spending projects in states and districts of powerful Congressmen.
In order to conceal the details of the massive increase in spending, the liberal Democrats spend their media time talking about “fairness” and promising to soak the “rich.” It’s the use of the “class war” tactic by an obvious appeal to envy, but there is nothing fair about the attempt to increase the present tax burden which now stands at 38 percent on the average American taxpayer.
Contrary to the assumptions of the liberals who want to increase taxes, Americans are not antagonistic toward “the rich” who work harder or smarter and make more money. Americans are angry about the taxes they themselves pay, along with the extravagant way that so much of it goes to people who don’t pay any taxes at all.
The average American works from January 1 to May 5 just to pay taxes. Only after Tax Freedom Day on May 5 can you keep your own hard-earned money. Those who are fed up with being forced to feed the hungry bureaucracy can join in Taxpayer’s Action Day this Saturday, October 27, sponsored by Citizens Against Government Waste.
