Another year, another pointless debate about the budget of the federal government.
As always, Democrats generally are decrying income inequality and plan on fixing it by using the government to redistribute wealth and “taxing and spending” our way to prosperity.
Republicans, for their part, are fighting to keep our country safe from imaginary demons by trying to increase the Department of Defense budget (which is already the highest in the world, making up almost half of total global military expenditures, or more than the next 10 countries combined) while claiming to be the “small budget” party.
The budget proposed by the Obama administration increases total spending by $200 billion for 2015, up to $4.1 trillion in total.
In reality, however, this so called budget is really more of a “wish list” full of items that the president knows have no chance of being included in whatever gets passed by the Republican controlled Congress.
Like a divorced parent battling for the love of a young child, President Obama has suggested the purchase of lots of goodies for the American people that he knows are never going to happen (and that he knows are probably a bad idea) specifically so that he can blame the Republicans for derailing their delivery.
That’s not to say that Republicans are the victims here. President Obama has thrown into his proposal the military spending increases Republicans are looking for as bait to bring them to the bargaining table.
Once there, the Republicans will abandon the promises of fiscal responsibility they made to the taxpayers in order to increase budgets for their military-industrial complex campaign contributors.
Sure, there will be fire spat by both sides with Democrats painting Republicans as elitists who want to step on the poor to make themselves richer while Republicans will claim Democrats are more Communist than Marx himself and are smothering business with their taxes and regulations. The two sides will paint themselves as polar opposites.
But at the end of the day, their spending plans are basically the same. The Republicans haven’t released their budget counterproposal for this year, but last year their proposal was to cut total spending for 2015 from the 21.3 percent of GDP proposed at that time by the Democrats all the way to 20.5 percent.
This 0.8 percent cut over (what was at the time) two years is what everyone’s so heated about, and would still mean we’re spending way more than we’re bringing in.
Our federal budget is a lot like the Titanic — it’s got a huge leak and is taking on way more mass than it can sustainably hold.
Instead of taking action the Republicans and Democrats are busy arguing about rather we should decrease the torrent of incoming water by one drop or two (ultimately they’ll agree to decrease it by one and a half drops, as long as we don’t have to sacrifice any guns as scrap to patch the hole).
The current generation of voters and politicians will be dead of old age before the ship goes down, so it’s little wonder that Democrats and Republicans alike have done so little to address the problem.
This bipartisan resolution of inaction has already ensured that our generation will have to spend the rest of our lives shoveling out the water that’s already gotten in. We cannot afford to wait until they have spent us past the tipping point that sinks us; now is the time that must we demand real changes from both parties.
If we don’t act before they drown us in their mistakes we will have no after.