-By Dan Scott
For all the troubles that are going on in the world today, does it not strike you as odd that the Democrat Party borders on isolationism to the point of being obtuse to world affairs? What do the Democrat candidates for president say regarding foreign policy? They say we need to talk to our enemies to achieve world peace, in other words, “Let the UN handle it.” They object to the use of the US military for operations such as Iraq, Iran and to some extent Afghanistan, yet not for Darfur. In the eight years of the Clinton co-presidency, military action was limited to a brief flirtation with Somalia in which we ran away at the first sign of trouble instead of a forceful response, Kosovo where we maintained a peace keeping operation, and launched a few missiles into the desert in retaliation for terrorist attacks to placate the public. Why this withdrawal from world affairs when it comes to confronting enemies who literally and repeatedly killed Americans?
During the eight years of the Clinton co-presidency, the military budget did not keep pace with inflation and was repeatedly raided with hidden social programs diverting spending from readiness. Additionally, we were treated to Welfare Reform that supposedly reduced the rolls of people deriving their income from the Federal Treasury, yet all the while they were touting the reduced Welfare rolls, social spending continued to increase and the people dependent on them increased, not decreased!
Here are some links to social programs from the EIC to Food Stamps showing the ever increasing cost to the Federal Treasury, i.e. your pocket book.
EIC $42 billion
The EIC is quickly becoming the NIT Negative Income Tax.
Now on to other social spending. Social Security $461 billion, Medicare Part B & D $408 billion. We are told by the Heritage Foundation, that Social Security is in trouble with 2017 (less than 10 years away) being the witching hour where annual SS receipts ($1.18 trillion in receipts SS and Medicare for 2006) will no longer exceed expenditures ($963.8 Billion for 2006) thus ending years of smoke and mirrors budget hiding annual deficit spending and the pay down the national debt begins. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM trsummary.html To those of us against deficit spending, this will be small consolation.
After looking these over, small wonder the Democrats are scrambling trying to find some way to increase taxes? It certainly does explain the deceptive Paygo rule the Democrats floated as an excuse to raise taxes by not indexing the AMT for inflation this year for 2007. They finally relented given that April 15 falls before election day this year. The Paygo deception was necessary to claim forgoing a tax increase by not adjusting the AMT, you see, to a Democrat not allowing taxes to increase is a TAX CUT. These are the same people who say they will not make the Bush tax cuts permanent by the 2010 expiration date, thus resulting in a massive tax increase in 2010. BTW – Not indexing the AMT would have been their solution to weaning us off of the Bush tax cuts since many who began paying the AMT in 2003 did so because of the Bush Tax cuts and thus didn’t reap the benefit like rest of the middle class, ironic isn’t it? The Democrats were merely trying to undo the Bush tax cut a few years early for the rest of us.
Now having gathered the facts we begin to see why the Democrats have been on the anti-war bandwagon, this is not about simple obtuseness to the world at large, this is about the bottom line. It’s one thing to fall on your sword over a tax increase by claiming it’s the only responsible thing to do, it’s entirely another thing to spend the same amount of money and not get credit for it. The entire premise of the Democrat Party is earning your vote by delivering government services, in Conservative circles this is called vote buying. The military budget, while it to an extent brings money into home districts through purchases of hardware and bases, does not get the bang for the buck as it were as does direct give away programs which can be easily taken credit for by individual Democrats. This is why Democrat supporters repeatedly fling around the idea of having spent $1 trillion on Iraq since 2003 when in fact, that is the entire budget of the military over the same period. Both Carter and Clinton demonstrated that during a Democrat run administration, the military budget is the first choice to go hunting for money for social programs. It’s not that Democrats don’t care what happens in the world, they care more for their constituency (priorities) than the country at large. The bottom line is this for Democrats, you can either spend $400 billion a year on defense or contract it out to the UN for far less, not raise taxes and then get the credit for it. It is cheaper to pay for another 911 than to finance the military on an annual basis, that’s why they view terrorism as an annoying eventuality that we must put up with and then blame someone else for antagonizing the natives. Now you understand the context of Hillary’s Christmas message with all those programs like S-CHIP going under the tree resonates with Democrats while conservatives decried the crass message we saw. And you thought conservatives were heartless and cruel for considering a cost benefit analysis…the Democrats did this long ago.
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Dan Scott calls himself a “Member of the Global Capitalist Cabal preaching Capitalism and personal responsibility as the economic solution to world poverty.” He is also a member of the 14th Amendment Society — victimhood is a liberal code word for denying the civil rights of others. He is also a proud member of the Global Warming Denier Cabal, insisting that facts not agendas determine the truth.
Dan can be seen on the web at http://www.geocities.com/fightbigotry2002/ as well as http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/saidwebpage.htm, And can be reached for comments at dscott8186@yahoo.com.
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