Fiscal-Cliff Antics
by
<http://fff.org/author/jacob-hornberger-2/>Jacob G. Hornberger January 2, 2013
The fiscal-cliff deal shouldn’t surprise anyone.
A sufficient number of Republicans caved,
enabling President Obama to bask in the glory of
causing Republicans to vote for a massive tax increase.
What did the Republicans get in return with respect to federal spending?
Not one darned thing. On the contrary, they
agreed that the “cuts” in federal spending that
were going to go into effect as part of the
“fiscal cliff” would be suspended for at least the next two months.
Why do I place “cuts” in quotation marks? Because
under the so-called fiscal cliff, there really
isn’t any reduction in federal spending at all.
That’s what the statists, including the
mainstream media, never point out. The
fiscal-cliff “cut” is actually an increase in federal spending.
Why do they call it a “cut”? Because the increase
in federal spending is not as much as federal
officials had hoped for and planned for. That’s
what a “cut” in federal spending means in
Washington and within the mainstream statist press.
Just to make sure everyone gets the point,
suppose, hypothetically, that the government is
spending 1 million dollars a year. Let’s say that
federal officials hope to spend $1.5 million next
year. Instead, they are allotted $1.2 million.
That’s what statists call a “cut” in federal
spending and get all freaked out about. Statists
say that if federal officials don’t get the full
increase in federal spending they hope for,
America will fall off a scary “cliff.”
What a crock. That’s what the Republicans got for
their cave in they gave the welfare-warfare
bureaucrats the full increase in federal spending
they had hoped for, at least for the next two
months, after which they will undoubtedly cave again.
And who did Republicans levy their massive tax
increase on? Succumbing to the envy and
covetousness that go to the heart of the
welfare-warfare state, Republicans joined with
Democrats to plunder and loot “the rich.”
Feeling his oats, Obama has already announced
that he has no intentions of negotiating any
spending decreases as part of the upcoming
debt-ceiling deadline. That’s the deadline by
which the federal government is prohibited from
incurring any debt in excess of the amount of
debt already incurred by the government.
What this demonstrates, of course, is that the
real battle for the future direction of this
country is between libertarians and statists,
with the latter group consisting of both conservatives and liberals.
Statists want to have the government continue
spending ever-increasing amounts of money, no
matter how much the government must tax, borrow,
and inflate. Statists say that that that’s the key to economic prosperity.
Libertarians, on the other hand, say that
ever-increasing spending, taxes, and inflation
are the key to economic bankruptcy and moral
debauchery. The key to economic prosperity lies
in reining in federal spending, taxes, and
inflation and, in fact, in dismantling the entire
welfare-warfare state, which depends on monies
that are sucked out of the private sector.
What should Congress have done with the so-called
fiscal cliff? From a short-term fiscal
standpoint, it should have drastically reduced
spending to the level of existing tax revenues,
without raising taxes on anyone. Yes, that would
mean a real cut in spending, one totaling about 1 trillion dollars.
Sure, that might mean pulling out of Afghanistan
right away or slashing Social Security, Medicare,
Medicaid, farm subsidies, and foreign aid to
dictatorships or laying off a large number of DEA
agents or major downsizing of bureaucracies or
canceling some road-building projects.
But statists are so emotionally vested in their
beloved federal welfare-warfare state that the
thought of reducing any portion of it is too
psychologically devastating to them. They just
can’t bring themselves to do it, and they even
convince themselves that their failure to do it
is actually beneficial to America.
But it’s not. As the people of Greece have
learned indeed, as people throughout history
have learned out of control government spending
leads precisely to where libertarians have long
said it would lead to economic and financial bankruptcy.
In the next two months, as the debt ceiling is
reached and that scary “fiscal cliff” is reached
again, the statists will again be harping on the
horrors of the “deficit” the amount of money
being spent in excess of tax revenues. It’s one
of their favorite sleights of hand, which they’ll
use to call for more tax increases to “close the deficit.”
But the “deficit” isn’t the problem. The problem
is that the government is spending too much.
The ultimate solution to this entire mess,
however, is not just to slash federal spending
but instead to dismantle the entire
welfare-warfare state apparatus, along with the
taxes that fund it. It’s time to admit that it
was a giant mistake to abandon our nation’s
heritage of economic liberty and a constitutional
republic in favor of a system based on plunder,
envy, covetousness, empire, and militarism.
Repeal every single welfare-state program,
including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
farm subsidies, and foreign aid, including aid to
favorite pro-U.S. dictatorships. Repeal the drug
war. Dismantle the bureaucracies. Close the
overseas bases and bring all the troops home and
discharge them. Get rid of the vast
military-industrial complex and the
national-security state apparatus. Repeal the
federal income tax. Abolish the Federal Reserve
and restore sound money to our lives.
Embrace economic liberty and reject statism.
That’s the solution to the statist cancer that is
destroying our nation’s body politic.
http://fff.org/2013/01/02/fiscal-cliff-antics/
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