Anything can happen with no roof for spending to go through...

The United States government is the largest business in the history of the world. With over twenty million employees, the federal government collected nearly $2 trillion in tax revenue in 2003. It even managed to collect nearly $15 billion from international sources such as Puerto Rico and other territories. I seem to recall a certain battle cry that was used to motivate the "rebel" colonials that went, "No taxation without representation." Nevertheless, the United States has been transformed into the very evil it sought to escape in 1776. One would be inclined to ask where all this money goes, and why in fact our government has managed to overspend this enormous budget so routinely. Well much of the fiscal squandering going on in Washington, as well as statewide, can be attributed to the thousands of government programs that are controlled by hundreds of government agencies. Furthermore, the ever-increasing defecit can be blamed on the lack of governmental reform.


Ronald Reagan said once, "The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." What is worse is that the federal government never knows when enough is enough, and proceed to create more programs with no purpose but to spend our tax money. Since 1962, the department that everyone blames for sucking all our federal spending has been the Department of Defense. However in the last four decades, defense spending has decreased three-fold, social security and treasury spending has doubled, education spending has more than tripled, and somehow healthcare spending has increased nearly eight-fold! Here is the information taken from the White House's historical budget tables:

(http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf)

In FY1962, the allocation of federal dollars to major departments is as follows:

Defense: 46.9%
Social Security: 13.4%
Treasury: 7.9%
HHS (Health): 3.3%
Education: 0.8%

In the estimates for FY2005, the allocation is as follows (followed by percent change):

Defense: 17.9% (-162%)
Social Security: 23.1% (+86%)
Treasury: 16.5% (+104%)
HHS (Health): 24.2% (+633%)
Education: 2.7% (+238%)

Unless you have no desire to understand the consequences of reckless spending, you will see these numbers and quickly figure out how easily spending can go out of control. Since the attacks on 9/11, while every anti-war American is vehemently opposing defense-oriented initiatives and the mainstream media is chastising our president for not getting spending under control, defense spending has only increased by 2%. Meanwhile, government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. continue to get more funding with no end in sight. From the aforementioned statistics it's plain to see where the offsets will have to come from to pay for rebuilding after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. However, don't expect the liberal Democrats in Congress to take any of that hogwash. Why there's still 18% of the budget going to the damned military, who needs those jerks anyways?!

Sooner or later, the public will realize that their hard-earned money is not going to pay for an "unjust war" or for faith-based initiatives. Their money is going into programs that continue to have no effect on poverty, unemployment, and the multitude of uninsured Americans. Perhaps if these programs were disbanded, and the money given back to those who deserve it, then maybe we'd see the rolls of the wealthy swell to new record highs. Maybe for once we'd see a truly prosperous America in the way the founding fathers intended it: devoid of governmental control.