Spending crisis

Are we about to watch as con­gress and the White House and the Demo­c­rat led Sen­ate,

(Har­ry Reid) engage in activ­i­ty that goes against the grain of what it means to be an Amer­i­can…

This if true is an amaz­ing sto­ry about how the US sen­ate is out of con­trol of the ordi­nary Amer­i­can Cit­i­zen.

The fol­low­ing may not reflect the opin­ions of the site own­er or admin­is­tra­tor.

This was received in an email. Dear Patri­ot, There is a loom­ing cri­sis in fed­er­al spend­ing that has
been con­ve­nient­ly ignored by the main­stream media. Fed­er­al retire­ment ben­e­fits have soared for
civ­il ser­vants and mil­i­tary per­son­nel, but the gov­ern­ment has not put a sin­gle dol­lar in reserve to
pay for the ben­e­fits! This is one more exam­ple of the irre­spon­si­ble way Con­gress spends our tax
dol­lars.

By law, pri­vate retire­ment plans are required to be pre-fund­ed. Mean­while the Fed­er­al
gov­ern­ment does not hold itself to the same stan­dard, kick­ing the metaphor­i­cal can down
the road by offer­ing retire­ment ben­e­fits with­out cre­at­ing a retire­ment account to pay the bills.

Pri­vate pen­sion plans hold over $2.3 tril­lion in stocks, bonds and oth­er assets, and even state
and local gov­ern­ments hold over $3 tril­lion in reserves to pay retire­ment ben­e­fits as they should.
Last year the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment paid a record $268 bil­lion in retire­ment ben­e­fits out of gen­er­al
fund rev­enues. All total, the unfund­ed lia­bil­i­ty for fed­er­al and mil­i­tary retire­ment ben­e­fits stands
at $5.7 tril­lion, which is dan­ger­ous­ly close to the unfund­ed man­date of social secu­ri­ty which has
an expect­ed short­fall of $6.5 tril­lion. By abdi­cat­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ty to assure the long term
health of our econ­o­my, Con­gress choos­es to kick the can down the road a lit­tle fur­ther each year,
leav­ing us at a point where there is no more road to kick down.

The prob­lem is not the gov­ern­ment
employ­ees who were promised a retire­ment plan when they were hired. For many, retire­ment
ben­e­fits were the decid­ing fac­tor between a pri­vate sec­tor career and choos­ing the secu­ri­ty of
a gov­ern­ment pen­sion pro­gram. My issue is with elect­ed lead­ers who use mon­ey that should
fund retire­ment ben­e­fits for gov­ern­ment work­ers on pet projects and pork-bar­rel spend­ing
instead.

It is not a mat­ter of strip­ping promised retire­ment ben­e­fits from retired fed­er­al work­ers,
just as we have no desire to take away Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits from those who depend on
them. The answer lies in sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment by return­ing to
Con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its on fed­er­al pow­er. Pow­er must be returned to the states, end­ing the
Big Broth­er men­tal­i­ty per­va­sive in Wash­ing­ton DC. We don’t need a Wash­ing­ton bureau­crat
decid­ing what’s best for our com­mu­ni­ties, and it’s clear we also can­not afford it.

Our move­ment must stay vig­i­lant and orga­nized as we roar from the rooftops to stop the
finan­cial insan­i­ty run­ning ram­pant in the halls of gov­ern­ment before it is too late.

For more infor­ma­tion about the sub­ject, or to make a com­ment, please vis­it our blog.

Sin­cere­ly, Roger Stock­ton Co-Founder, West­ern Rep­re­sen­ta­tion PAC