Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
The White House has released its Fiscal Year 2018 budget on Tuesday, and of course everyone is already up in arms about the proposed spending cuts that won’t make it out of committee, let alone back to Trump’s desk for ratification. Of course, their complaints are all silly as none of the cuts goes anywhere near far enough and the budget also calls for increases in defense spending.
Sending the left into conniptions is the proposed $3.6 billion in proposed cuts, which Reuters hyperbolically called “austere,” over the next ten years; particularly the $610 billion he wants cut from Medicaid and the $192 billion from food assistance programs. While those are big cuts, they would leave Medicaid and welfare intact, so they don’t go far enough, especially if the budget is to reach its laughable goal of being balanced within ten years.
“The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan policy organization, said the plan relied on gimmicks, unrealistic cuts and ‘rosy assumptions’ of economic growth that would reach 3 percent annually by the end of Trump’s first term.
The Congressional Budget Office projects the economy to grow at an annual pace of 1.9 percent over that period,” Reuters reported.
Other cuts include deep slashes to the State Department’s budgets for foreign aid and other non-military foreign relations programs, reducing those by nearly a third – again not far enough. Of course, for old-timey statists, taking away any of the government’s power, money or “duties” is a non-starter.
“’If we implemented this budget, you’d have to retreat from the world or put a lot of people at risk,’ said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. ’This budget is not going to go anywhere,’” Reuters quoted him as saying.
The article seemed to almost praise Trump for proposing a total failure of a budget.
“Trump upheld his promise – for the most part – that he would not cut Medicare and Social Security, two expensive safety-net programs that deficit hawks have long targeted for reforms.
Those programs may not come out of Capitol Hill unscathed, however. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a fellow Republican, said lawmakers would have to reform both programs to save them.
The White House proposed changes that would require more childless people receiving help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, to work,” Reuters reported.
One cannot “reform” Social Security or welfare any more than a surgeon can reform a cancerous tumor. Either we get rid of the twin cancers of Social Security and welfare or we wait for them to kill us dead; those are the options. Apparently, we’re going to wait for them to kill us dead.
The fact is, nothing government ever does or can ever do can be good or beneficial to mankind as all government actions are based upon evil. Furthermore, government itself is just an assemblage of people who couldn’t hack it in the private sector, so, letting them anywhere near a monopoly on violence is a terrible idea. Astute readers were reminded of this fact while perusing the headlines yesterday when they saw that five people were charged yesterday with insider trading – of government health insurance information.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services employee Christopher Worrall is among the accused and was the hinge-pin of the scheme. He was able to steal advance, confidential notice of changes in regulations concerning healthcare companies and pass it along to employees of healthcare hedge fund Deerfield Management. Armed with that information, Deerfield managed to profit $3.9 million trading those affected companies and another defendant earned $193K in consulting fees, according to Reuters.
There is nothing groundbreaking, or even remarkable, really, about the actions of the defendants. Ever since we’ve had a too-powerful federal government, we’ve had people trying to use it for their own ends. Over the centuries, the federal government has become a massive collection point for stolen loot and bureaucratic red tape with little to no oversight and even that coming from the corrupt government itself. As long as it exists, relatively small abuses, like that committed by current federal employee Christopher Worrall, will continue unabated alongside massive abuses like Obamacare, the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the Internal Revenue Service, the DEA, FBI, NSA, CIA, BATF, FAA, FDA, FCC, etc.
When human societal evolution takes the next big step and finally renders the state a relic of our inglorious past, then those of us in the current peasant class will finally achieve freedom and security. Until we take that step, we will continually be plundered by those with a monopoly on using guns and cages with impunity.
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