House Minority Whip (and moron from Maryland) Steny Hoyer said that we might not get the budget balanced for twenty years because we have dug ourselves a deep hole. The article quotes Hoyer as saying we went from a 5.6 trillion dollar surplus into a 5 trillion dollar hole. The article inserted the appropriate word after surplus, “projected”.
The alleged budget surplus never existed. It was a projection based on a number of gimmicks and based upon Congress doing certain things and taking certain actions, none of which they did. Even in the years where it is claimed that we had a budget surplus we had billions in debt so we were not out of any hole. To be clear, there was no Bill Clinton budget surplus but if you want to believe there was a surplus please be sure to credit it to the Republican Congress because they were in the majority.
Regardless, Hoyer has never met a spending bill that he did not like (or a tax he did not hike). He has been in office for a very long time and he has voted for all the spending that contributed to the problems we have but he is just now realizing that a problem exists.
It is amazing how Democrats become budget hawks when they are not in power but spend and spend and spend when they are in control. In any event, we can balance the budget in fewer than twenty years (or even ten) if the people in Congress will sit down and CUT the unnecessary spending and the waste. They also need to reform Social Security and Medicare which, along with unemployment insurance account for 35% of what we spend.
Younger people need to be allowed to invest their own money and gradually stop paying into Social Security and people who are closer to retirement need to be able to choose to either stay in it or get their money back and invest on their own (or some combination of these). Social Security needs to eventually go away and be replaced by a system where people have their money go to accounts that belong to them, cannot EVER be touched by government and can be passed on to their heirs when they die.
There are plenty of cuts that can be made and plenty of programs (many of which exist in multiples) that can be downsized, combined or eliminated to get our fiscal house in order.
If Hoyer is concerned about the hole that Congress (and that means people of all parties) have dug then he needs to get on board with the Republicans and push for the cuts so that we can get back to sanity.
We cannot spend our way to prosperity. If spending made us solvent we would be having high times because government has done nothing but spend.
The people in Hoyer’s District should have elected Charles Lollar. They were too busy suckling at the teat…
Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
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