Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
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More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

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Congress to Raise Debt Ceiling: Why You Should Care Print
By Sam Batkins
Thursday, December 17 2009
With a debt-to-assets ratio that is little better than that of an unemployed gambling addict, it’s only a matter of time before U.S. creditors start to demand some assurances that they’ll ultimately be paid. And that’s when Congress will, rightly or wrongly, see no other choice than to provide such assurances through tax hikes, massive tax hikes.

For most people, “deficit spending” and the “national debt” are nothing more than fancy terms of art thrown around by Ivy League economists and Washington elites, incomprehensibly large numbers with which only certified smart people concern themselves.  Who really cares that the House of Representatives this week voted to raise the U.S. debt ceiling?  After all, a national deficit the country has been carrying around since the Revolutionary War really has no effect on the everyday lives of average middle-class American families, right?

Wrong.

Our nation’s national debt currently stands at an astounding $12.1 trillion, or double the amount it was just seven years ago.  At the current pace, in just ten years the U.S. will spend $774 billion on interest payments alone.  That’s more than the entire projected budget for national defense.  It’s also more than the projected budgets for the Departments of Commerce, Labor, Transportation, Interior and Veterans’ Affairs … combined.

What that means for American families, regardless of economic class, is taxes, taxes and more taxes. 

As a recent Peterson-Pew Commission report noted, “[T]he United States is already hearing concerns about its fiscal management from some of its largest creditors, and the country is uncomfortably vulnerable to shifts in confidence around the world.”  With a debt-to-assets ratio that is little better than that of an unemployed gambling addict, it’s only a matter of time before U.S. creditors start to demand some assurances that they’ll ultimately be paid.  And that’s when Congress will, rightly or wrongly, see no other choice than to provide such assurances through tax hikes, massive tax hikes.

Current tax-increasing ideas being floated from the intellectual dregs of Congress include raising income tax rates to pre-Reagan levels (over 50%) and introducing a European-style value-added tax (sales tax).  Both are awful ideas.   Either one would dramatically impede economic growth and put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage to other countries that are now lowering taxes to attract capital and investment. 

In a country already drowning in debt, Congress is now tossing anvils over the side in an attempt to “save” taxpayers, asserting that its vote to raise the debt ceiling is needed, and is no different than previous Republican-sponsored debt hikes.  The reality, however, is that the current Congressional leadership, with its unprecedented big government agenda, is saddling not-so-future generations with insurmountable debt, a potentially worthless dollar and no discernible plan to restore fiscal order. 

As the numbers reveal, the current pace of spending is reaching historic highs, surpassing even notorious GOP spending sprees.  For example, the $787 billion pork-infested stimulus bill that President Obama signed earlier this year wasn’t just big – it was so big that, adjusted for inflation, it was more expensive than the New Deal ($500 billion) and the Marshall Plan ($115 billion) combined.

The nation’s long spending train didn’t end with the “stimulus,” however.  In the past year alone, politicians from both parties have spent $4 trillion on the financial crisis they helped to create.  For perspective, with $4 trillion, we fought World War II ($3.6 trillion), rebuilt Europe ($115 billion), and built the Panama Canal ($790 million) and the Hoover Dam ($78 million).  The current Congress is also seeking to pass a $1 trillion Cap-and-Trade climate bill that effectively regulates and taxes all carbon production in the nation, and a $2.5 trillion health care “reform” package that does nothing to drive down U.S. health care costs.  

And instead of having an open and clean debate on raising the debt ceiling to pay for their economy-crushing agenda, Speaker Pelosi and her band of tax-and-spend acolytes decided to attach it to the Defense Department’s funding bill.  In other words, the ultimatum for House Republicans and fiscally-responsible members of her caucus was “vote with us or vote against the troops.” 

In the end, the “No” votes of 38 responsible Democrats and all House Republicans fell short.  Speaker Pelosi was able the secure 218 votes, the bare minimum needed to raise the debt ceiling. 

The level of debt and new spending is truly staggering on even an historic level.  Never before have politicians been so crass in their desire to expand the federal government and limit individual liberties.  

November 2010 can’t come soon enough.

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