Sacred Cows Stand in Our Way; A Call To Action

Earlier this week our President released his budget for FY 2012 that begins October 1, 2011, which brought forth both praise and condemnation. Regardless, the budgetary process tells us a lot about ourselves (the voters), our elected official, and our electoral process.

Our FY11 budget states that we foremost want to provide for the elderly and the poor in the form of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid followed by protecting our borders and arguably those of our closest allies. However, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense and other mandatory expenditures consume more than 80% of our budget. To put in another perspective, these social and military obligations (aka sacred cows) more than exceed all tax receipts with which to fund the budget.

Therefore, if we want a balanced budget without touching these programs and/or raising taxes we most stop allocating approximately $1,000,000,000,000 (that is $1 trillion not the $60 billion everyone is making such a big deal about that the House wants to cut) to the non-mandatory programs in the following departments:

1. Health and Human Services,
2. Transportation,
3. Veteran Affairs,
4. State,
5. HUD,
6. Education,
7. Homeland Security,
8. Energy,
9. Agriculture,
10. Justice,
11. NASA,
12. Labor,
13. Treasury,
14. Interior,
15. EPA,
16. National Science Foundation,
17. Corps of Engineers,
18. Small Business Administration and
19. Other agencies.

Furthermore, if we want to start paying down the debt after cutting all these other programs we will need to raise taxes and/or reduce spending on these sacred cows.

Additionally, the outlays for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid exceed the tax receipts specific to these programs by approximately $625,000,000,000 or approximately $2,000 per person for 2011 (therefore, a four person household is theoretically responsible for paying an additional $8,000 or $667 per month just for these programs before contributing to roads, education, housing, etc........................I bet you, that after deductions you paid Uncle Sam not much more than that in 2010 Federal taxes). This data point alone should tells us that our elected officials have very little financial common sense and that we are not much better off if we keep electing them.

I think we should cut out the non-sense and swallow the bitter pill, while it is still small, that nothing is sacred. I thought the deficit task force produced a great road-map; as anecdotal evidence, the recommendations arguably displeased both parties. However, our elected officials are doing what they do best; they have pretty much ignored the plan to protect their backers/supporters at the expense of the rest of the nation, kind of like what I found locally.

You and I may not agree where the budget cuts should occur, but hopefully you agree that cuts must be made. Regrettably, I believe taxes will need to be raised, too; I do not know any other way to pay down our debt (which amounts to approximately $50,000 per person or $200,000 per a four person household probably residing in a home at less than that value) absent monetizing it (which would probably wipe out the value in our savings via inflation).

I encourage you to call your representative in Washington; I believe it is in your best interest because if they are not hearing from you then they are hearing from lobbyists funded by special interests. You may find your representative's contact information here. Please call today. You may not reach anyone, but your representative does track the calls received.

I called my representative, Corrine Brown. It took less than a minute from looking up the number via the link above to providing the above mentioned information to the individual receiving calls.

Ms. Brown's staff person was polite, but the individual's hasty exit to end the call tells me that Ms. Brown does not care about our budget crisis. More specifically, the staff person could have responded to my concern by stating the actions Ms. Brown is taking to reign in our spending. Absent this dialog, I am left to believe Ms. Brown's interests lie elsewhere - please read the my other posts if you are a first time reader.

Given Ms. Brown's staff person's response, I decided to call Ander Crenshaw's (FL-4) office, which also took less than a minute. His staff person seemed more interested in hearing me out, but also seemed just as clueless. However, I believe the individual would pass along my concerns, which is much more than I can say about Ms. Brown's office.

If you do not want to call, you could copy pertinent parts of this post or even the URL for this post and paste it in an email to your representative. Your representative's email can be found here.

If you do not want to do that, how about you share the information with your friends and family? I figure if enough people know, then our elected officials will eventually receive word.