BuckeyeBlog

For those of us who want our politicians to be responsible with our tax money, this Forbes article can hardly be more depressing:

Call it a Washington pile-on.

A normal taxpayer might think that since the Treasury Department has just committed the government to spending an unknown (but possibly very large) amount taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Congress would be in a tightfisted mood.

But that’s not the way some Washington lobbyists and politicians think. Instead, they’re viewing the bailout as an invitation to push through other taxpayer-financed bailouts and aid in the few weeks that Congress will work before members break to campaign full time for the November elections.

Among the things that your tax money may get spent on: low-interest loans to the auto industry, more money to food stamps, bridge and road construction, state Medicaid programs (many states, like Ohio, passed an expansion in benefits without having the money to pay for them), local law enforcement, and aid for heating bills.

So we have a deficit and tax revenues are less than robust, so we should spend even more money to bail out irresponsible corporations and state governments and give money to projects that benefit politically-connected special interest groups?  The logic escapes me. I guess that’s why I no longer work on Capitol Hill.

Tags: government spending

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 11:36 am and is filed under Constitutional Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.