The US Budget Deficit If someone said to me what was one of the biggest mysteries I ever saw, I would reply that’s easy, it is the finances of the United States. How does a country which is in debt for probably 40 or more trillion dollars keep going? Any other country would have been forced to declare bankruptcy. When Iceland was swindled out of its national treasury, they had to default on their sixty-two-billion-dollar national debt. The default was caused because their three largest banks were nationalized. Iceland began to offer 15 percent interest which drew a lot of new accounts not only from Iceland but also from other countries because of the high interest rate. How could they offer such a high rate? It was because the Iceland Krona was very high in value. The rate was high when the stock market was high then it fell and the Krona fell 50 percent and the debts could no longer be met. The banks in the US were bailed out when we had a problem, but poor Iceland didn’t have the ability to pay them off. What happened when the economy collapsed in Iceland was instead of a bank bailout, 29 bankers were sent to jail. Can you ever imagine that happening here? The United States economy is terribly run. First of all, every part of the economy is political. It is run by political deals being made in the House and Senate on the budget and convincing a president not to veto the result. Much of the budget for the year is a product of lobbyists. What this means is you are going to get overspending which will go into the coffers of large interests such as companies and even other countries. None of that type of money will go to the people. The accounting methods which are used would bankrupt a civilian if he or she used the same methods which mean spending more on the budget than we take in. If you or I did this it would be called irresponsible, when the government does it, it is called business as usual. In 2019 the US government took in 3.464 trillion dollars, but it spent 4.448 trillion dollars. If one examines where the government gets its money from, they would find one of the causes of the shortfall. Almost half of all money collected comes from income tax. If we examine what large corporations are paying, we would find some of them pay nothing. It has been said Amazon pays no taxes, I can’t verify this but an article I read says it was because the corporation is registered in Luxembourg. Payroll taxes amounted to about 1/3 of the income. Actual corporate taxes only amounted to 7 percent. The balance of the budget was from excise taxes, estate taxes, interest on Federal Reserve deposits and miscellaneous sources. The House and the Senate sometime act like the US budget is their pot full of money to do whatever they want with and this has been shown many times over. This also contributes to the shortfall. Over the years the House has been caught allocating money unwisely, and I am being kind putting it that way. They allocated money to build a temple in France and the famous bridge to nowhere. The bridge was to be built to connect the mainland to an island with a population of only 50 people at the time and cost millions of dollars. Sometimes these Pork Barrel allocations are made behind closed doors because the House knows they are wrong to do and doesn’t want the public to know about them. The infamous Big Dig in Boston had a budget of 3 billion dollars. It turned out to cost 15 billion dollars and was significantly behind schedule. There are other projects which really screw up the budget. These are the Black Projects. Black Projects are secret government projects and usually have to do with weapons development or the military in some way. The people who run these projects are not accountable in the same way contractors on other projects are. As a matter of fact, an agency running a Black Project can take money out of the budget of other agencies without permission, sometimes causing that agency to need more money for the year. Imagine how hard it is to run an agency with a shrinking budget because your budget is being raided. One of the reasons for a huge US budget deficit is the idea of a balanced budget is never carried out. You know how you look at the budget for the month and eliminate a thing here and there because they put you over budget? There is no one person who has the authority to do that on the national level. Instead you have a group of legislators pushing to all get their lobbyists preferences carried out at any cost.
|
