How To Spend Your State Into Debt
By Karl Weinberg (02/28/03)
We are being told daily by the Liberal media that state governments are now overburdened with debt. Governors all over this great country are lining up at the trough to get their bucket of slop. What happened to all the money that was coming into those state coffers during the "boom times" of the Clinton era?
Most people don't realize or even care that during the Clinton era, the vast majority of state governments went on a taxpayer funded spending spree. It can be compared to somebody that has pets. When you go away for a week do you leave a weeks worth of food out for the animals? Of course not, because if you did they would gorge themselves until they were sick. This same, simplistic analogy applies to what 45 of 50 state governments did during the 90's. There was plenty of money flowing into the coffers. We, the taxpayers were just having a good ol time and so were our elected representatives in state government. During this time, in many of these states taxes were still rising there by bringing in even more money politicos could get their hands on.
During this time many of these states were getting huge amounts of money from the tobacco settlements. This money was to be used to help patients that suffered the ill affects of that evil weed. What did some of these states want to use this money for? California wanted to use it for sidewalks. In Oklahoma, they wanted to use it for teacher retirement funds. In North Dakota, refurbishing a morgue. This is insane! My friends why weren't our taxes lowered? Why did we not get back money from many of these states? Because rather than thinking about us, the taxpayer, the state governments thought about more programs, more pork.
One such program here in Florida is when you build a government building you have to allocate a certain percentage on artwork. What? You want to use my hard earned tax money to fund artists? And our lawmakers even went so far as to make it a law that it has to be done.
You would have thought that this would have been a good time to lower the taxes on many of the hard working taxpayers of these states, but alas, no. You see my friends, government budgets are not run like we run our household budgets. When you or I go to the store and need more products than we have money in our pocket, we have to do without. Not so with governments.
Here in the great state of Florida, our governor, Jeb Bush, is considering taking money from certain trust funds in order to keep our budget balanced. Now, while I have no real problem with this, I still see no reason why trust funds should have to be dipped into. There have been many times that I have saved money to purchase something only to find out I needed that money for something else with a higher priority.
This is normal. But we cannot continue to spend these vast amounts of money on "programs." Where has the personal responsibility of the individual gone? Why does somebody else have to pay for the pet projects of other people?
If you believe the Liberal media, the states governments did not spend enough! You hear "the children, the children, who will help the children." The homeless have become in vogue again in the Liberal media.
Here in East central Florida, you did not see a story in the local newspaper about the homeless for almost 8 years. Now they are on the front page almost daily. "Who will feed the homeless?" "We need to raise taxes to build a place for them to sleep, wash, eat, read, raise their families etc., etc."
If it were left up to the Liberal media, state governments should raise our taxes weekly to compensate for their list of social ills. Which leads me back to, what happened to the money of the "boom years?" Like a drunken sailor many of these states spent it as fast as it came in. They disregarded the hard working taxpayer that sends them this money to use with some assurance of fiscal responsibility. We as taxpayers need to be more vigilant with our elected officials. We put them into office. The money that we send them is just that, our money. We expect it to be used responsibly.
The President should hold the line on sending these states more money.
Only the money that these states need to uphold the First Responders should be sent, no more. It is time that we start to wean the hogs off the trough. We as taxpayers should expect better of our state governments.
God Bless America!
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