Blame It on FDR, LBJ, Bush and Obama

Blame It on FDR, LBJ, W and Obama

Terry Jeffrey
April 20, 2011

When President Barack Obama declared last week that America "would not be a great country" were it not for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment insurance, he committed one brief moment of partial candor.

"By 2025, the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- Social Security, and the interest we owe on our debt," he said. "That's it. Every other national priority -- education, transportation, even our national security -- will have to be paid for with borrowed money."

Obama's basic fiscal construct here has analytical value, but his timeline is wrong.

We don't need to wait more than a decade for the welfare state to bankrupt America. It is doing it now.

Government programs Obama views as indispensable are already eating up more than every tax dollar hardworking Americans pay to the federal government.

Here's a quick accounting based on the actual numbers for fiscal 2010 reported by Obama's Treasury Department:

Total federal tax revenues in 2010 were $2.0377 trillion.

Social Security cost $571.5 billion -- rounded to the nearest hundred million. Medicare cost $513.7 billion. Medicaid cost $268 billion. And unemployment insurance cost $156.7 billion.

The interest on the national debt for the year was $186.3 billion.

On top of the cost of the actual benefits doled out by welfare-state programs, the federal government also needed to pay $176.2 billion in salaries to federal workers and $63.7 billion for insurance benefits for these workers.

All of these expenses added up to $1.9361 trillion -- or 95 percent of the government's $2.0377 trillion in tax revenue.

After paying for just the expenses listed above, the federal government had only $101.6 billion in tax revenue left.

Now, in his speech declaring that America would not be a great country if not for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment insurance, the next federal spending "priority" Obama mentioned was "education."

Leaving aside whether the federal government has any constitutional authority to meddle in primary and secondary education (it does not), is it fair to assume that Obama and other pro-welfare-state liberals would not countenance eliminating -- or even significantly curtailing -- federal education spending?

I think it is fair.

According to the Treasury, "Education Department programs" cost the federal government $251.9 billion in fiscal 2010. If you subtract this $251.9 billion from the remaining $101.6 billion in tax revenue, you end up with a deficit of $150.3 billion.

That means that after paying for the main federal welfare-state and education programs last year, the federal government was already in debt.

It thus needed to borrow every penny that it paid for the Defense Department, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, all of which -- unlike the welfare-state programs and the Department of Education -- carry out core constitutional functions of the federal government.

According to the Treasury, the national debt increased $1.652 trillion last year.

So, who's to blame?

Well, you could blame the Founding Fathers. After all, they are the ones who framed a Constitution that authorized the central government to maintain a national defense, conduct diplomacy, secure our borders and enforce the federal laws.

Or you could blame the architects of the federal welfare state. These are the politicians who built the wealth-redistributing programs that are now breeding government dependency in America, pushing us deep into debt and driving us toward an economic catastrophe that may do permanent damage not only to our prosperity but to our liberty.

This is where the blame belongs.

It belongs to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for threatening to pack the Supreme Court with Democratic liberals if the court did not agree to distort the meaning of the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution and allow him and a liberal Congress to flout the true limits on federal power and enact the first federal welfare program in Social Security.

It belongs to Lyndon Baines Johnson, who expanded the federal welfare state in 1965 with Medicare and Medicaid, making the elderly and the poor in this country dependent on the federal government for health care. It belongs to George W. Bush, a "big government conservative," who not only made peace with the welfare state but resolved to make it bigger.

History will remember "W" as the Republican who massively increased federal involvement in education through the No Child Left Behind Act and who significantly increased the insolvency of Medicare by creating a prescription drug entitlement.

And, of course, it belongs to Obama.

Our current president saw the nation heading toward bankruptcy driven by the welfare state and signed legislation forcing every American to buy a government-approved health insurance plan and promising to subsidize that purchase for all households earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level.

Had FDR, LBJ, W and Obama all failed -- had Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the drug entitlement and Obamacare never been enacted -- America most assuredly would still be a great country.

And government would have less control over our lives.

It is time to prove our greatness again by turning our course back to limited government and self-reliance.

I agree with everything the author says here. I would only submit that he forgot an important enabling figure in this whole thing... and that would be Woodrow Wilson, presided over the enactment of the 16th and 17th Amendments. And it was the 16th that has wreaked the most havoc on our constitutional republic. The 16th Amendment gave the government the means to even propose and fund the policies of FDR, LBJ, W and Obama.

Total federal tax revenues in 2010 were $2.0377 trillion.

Social Security cost $571.5 billion -- rounded to the nearest hundred million. Medicare cost $513.7 billion. Medicaid cost $268 billion. And unemployment insurance cost $156.7 billion.

The interest on the national debt for the year was $186.3 billion.

On top of the cost of the actual benefits doled out by welfare-state programs, the federal government also needed to pay $176.2 billion in salaries to federal workers and $63.7 billion for insurance benefits for these workers.

All of these expenses added up to $1.9361 trillion -- or 95 percent of the government's $2.0377 trillion in tax revenue.

After paying for just the expenses listed above, the federal government had only $101.6 billion in tax revenue left.

According to the Treasury, "Education Department programs" cost the federal government $251.9 billion in fiscal 2010. If you subtract this $251.9 billion from the remaining $101.6 billion in tax revenue, you end up with a deficit of $150.3 billion.

That means that after paying for the main federal welfare-state and education programs last year, the federal government was already in debt.

It thus needed to borrow every penny that it paid for the Defense Department, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, all of which -- unlike the welfare-state programs and the Department of Education -- carry out core constitutional functions of the federal government.

According to the Treasury, the national debt increased $1.652 trillion last year.

I wonder how anyone can even begin to defend this? Those are horrifying numbers.

It cannot be defended in any objective or logical sense. It can only be defended by appealing to emotion alone - logic would preclude any defense. But then, one can never accuse liberals of employing logic - they are all about emotion and "feelings" and "fairness" as though these things can be quantified and legislated.

It's all very, very sad.

kronos wrote:

dblboggie wrote:But then, one can never accuse liberals of employing logic - they are all about emotion and "feelings" and "fairness" as though these things can be quantified and legislated.

Not content to criticize liberal policies and the legacies of liberal presidents, you proceed to insult liberal people in general, including (presumably) > 50% of this board.

Knock it off.

Please, tell me, what are the legacies of "liberal" (read that progressive, socialist, communist, Marxist, ext... all interchangeable here) policies? The burgeoning national debt? Unsustainable federal spending on "progressive" programs like social security and Medicare and Medicaid?

Just what is the legacy of liberal presidents? Our country has just been downgraded by S&P from stable to negative - the first time in 70 years (think great depression)... we are borrowing at unprecedented levels... we are out of money. And yet the Democrats and Obama are sticking to their liberal/progressive guns. Obama said in a speech today that "I want to live in a society that's fair..."

What the hell does that mean? What the hell is "fair" when he wants to attack those who make more than $250K/year? The very people who are the creators of jobs.

I'm sorry, but I cannot defend the positions of this President, his supporters in the Congress, or those Democrats amongst the populist who agree with him.

I would happily welcome any challenge to my position here. We are spending ourselves into doom thanks to liberal policies. Please, tell me how I am wrong about this.

When I post in red, I am moderating, not discussing politics. I have no problem with your trenchant criticism of liberal politics and politicians, but blanket insults against people of any political camp is crossing the line (and a violation of the rules) so please knock it off and keep it civil.

If you have any comments about this, please PM me.

Carry on.

dblboggie wrote:(read that progressive, socialist, communist, Marxist, ext... all interchangeable here)

Aside from being wrong, that too is offensive. How would you like all social conservatives to be lumped in with all flavours of the right wing? Fascists, nationalists, jingoists, theocrats...?

kronos wrote:When I post in red, I am moderating, not discussing politics. I have no problem with your trenchant criticism of liberal politics and politicians, but blanket insults against people of any political camp is crossing the line (and a violation of the rules) so please knock it off and keep it civil.

If you have any comments about this, please PM me.

Carry on.

Ah... I'm sorry... my bad. I missed that this was modding. And I apologize for being an ass with my remarks. I know better than to generalize like that, but sometimes my mood overtakes my mind.

Again, sorry if I offended anyone.

dblboggie wrote:Again, sorry if I offended anyone.

TexasBlue wrote:

dblboggie wrote:Again, sorry if I offended anyone.

Please... harder.... HARDER!!!

dbl: Thanks for being man enough to realize and admit you were "being an ass." Generally, I think you're quite a gentleman here, but we all have those moments.

Unfortunately, it looks like Tex will not be so forgiving as I was...

And yeah, I could've more clear in my first post. I think when I post as a mod, I need to strive for extreme clarity and economy of language, and cut out all the fluff.

kronos wrote:dbl: Thanks for being man enough to realize and admit you were "being an ass." Generally, I think you're quite a gentleman here, but we all have those moments.

Unfortunately, it looks like Tex will not be so forgiving as I was...

And yeah, I could've more clear in my first post. I think when I post as a mod, I need to strive for extreme clarity and economy of language, and cut out all the fluff.

You're quite welcome my friend. I'm not afraid to admit when I've crossed the line. No one is perfect, least of all me.

As for Tex... I will deal with him in my own way...

As for your modding, eh... I should have taken the red as a clue. But I'm pretty burned out by the time I get here these days (work all day, school all night) and I have a cold which is making me miserable. So you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. You're doing a great job as a mod in my opinion.

dblboggie wrote:you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. You're doing a great job as a mod in my opinion.

Yeah, he should. He deleted one of Bubbles' posts a couple weeks ago by accident by clearing it in Edit instead of Quote.

All joking aside, Kronos does a good job in here.