Fellow Patriots!
Good afternoon, and welcome to our tea party! Let me begin with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
At our tea party today, we are letting our government know that we do not fear it, and that we taxpayers will do whatever it takes to preserve our liberty.
I was asked to talk today about the massive expansion in government spending and taxation. I will explain why you should care about it, and how much of a threat it is to our way of life.
Let's review recent spending programs implemented by the federal government:
· $ 700 billion for TARP I
· $ 750 billion for TARP II
· $ 819 billion for the Stimulus Bill
· $ 410 billion for the Omnibus Spending Bill (with 9000 earmarks for special interests)
· $ 3.6 trillion for the annual budget
And that's just domestic spending! At the recent G20 summit, Obama committed America to huge overseas spending, including:
- $ 1 trillion for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
- $ 845 billion for the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, known here in the US as the Global Poverty Act
- Perhaps trillions more for a foreign aid program called Special Drawing Rights
- Perhaps trillions more for the initiatives of the UN Climate Change Conference
The good news is that the G20 overseas spending proposals have not yet been approved by Congress. The bad news is that Congress is controlled by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
The worse news is that none of this money actually exists! Here are a few frightening facts to put these spending proposals in perspective:
· The national debt at the end of Obama's first term will be greater than our entire Gross Domestic Product.
· If you spent $ 2 million dollars every single day during every single year from the birth of Christ until today, you will still not have spent as much as Obama's budget deficit planned for the coming year.
· If you added up all of the debt accumulated by all of the presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush in the course of 234 years, Obama's proposed debt exceeds that amount in just his first four-year term.
· And here's the one that ought to frighten every taxpayer to death: If the government had to account for its finances like a private business, its true deficit is actually $ 65 trillion, which exceeds the GDP of the entire world. This is because future obligations, like Social Security and Medicare benefits liabilities, are completely unfunded. There is not a single penny saved for these programs, but we are already committed to the spending.
So, what are we getting for these trillions and trillions of dollars? Here's a sampling:
· We will get nothing for the trillions Obama has committed to spend on UN and IMF initiatives, other than perhaps other countries may accept Obama's apology for American arrogance.
· We will make a $ 634 billion down payment on nationalized health care, for which we will get rationing of services and very healthy illegal immigrants.
· We will get 32 new government departments at a cost of $ 136 billion. This is really:
- 32 new buildings in Washington
- 32 new staffs of paper pushers
- 32 new reams of rules and regulations
- 32 more bureaucratic attacks on our liberty
- 32 more agencies that will never die, if Reagan was right about government bureaucracies being the closest thing to eternal life that we have
· States will get $ 60 billion to increase their welfare expenditures, for which you will get a bill from your state or local government when the stimulus money runs out.
· 60.7 million people who do not pay federal income taxes will get a tax credit from the government. Speaking in plain English, this means that they will get welfare. Illegal aliens will be eligible for this credit.
· AIG got $ 180 billion in bail-out funds, of which $ 11.9 billion was forwarded to Societe Generale, a bank in France; $ 11.8 billion to Deutsche Bank in Germany; and $ 8.5 billion to Barclay's, a bank in England. I wonder if any American taxpayers will get a "thank you" card for this. Maybe Obama will bow to the leaders of these countries on his next visit.
· ACORN will get $ 750 million, which might get us even more voter fraud than what ACORN is currently being charged with in 14 states.
· We will get more of Big Brother in the form of 40 million smart utility meters to control energy usage in our homes.
· We will get 600,000 more federal, state, and local government employees.
· One thing you might not get is your 401 (k) tax deductions. House Democrats are looking at eliminating this as a cost-savings measure.
Let's be honest. These spending programs are not about stimulating the economy. In fact, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported that Obama's stimulus plan would hurt the economy more in the long run than if he did nothing. No, these programs are about "taking advantage of a crisis", as Hillary, Barack, and Rahm have told us. They are about spending an avalanche of money on the pent-up leftist agenda. Instead of wasting a crisis, they are going to waste your money on:
· Increasing the size and scope of the government
· Transferring wealth from the Have's to the Have-Not's
· Punishing the coal, oil, and automotive industries while jousting with the "Global Warming" windmill
· Rewarding labor unions, teacher unions, and government worker unions for supporting the Democrats
· Taking control of the banking and financial system of the US
· And nationalizing health insurance
But what's even more frightening than our money being spent on this openly socialist agenda is the question of where this money is going to come from.
The federal government is funded in three ways. All three of them are going to drain your wealth, the wealth of your children, and the wealth of your children's children. Here are the three ways our government is funded:
· First, the government is funded by borrowing money (this assumes that the Chinese and other foreigners want to continue lending to us, which is in doubt):
o The problem with this is that we still have to pay interest on the debt. This is a massive time bomb, especially when inflation kicks in and interest rates skyrocket. A $ 15 trillion national debt at 10% interest will require $ 1.5 trillion in interest payments every year. This will have to be paid with taxes. Assuming that there are 100 million taxpayers, each one will have to pay $ 15,000 in taxes each year just to cover interest!
- Second, the government is funded by collecting taxes:
-The Problem with this is that even if the government confiscated 100% of the income of everyone making $ 75,000 or more, it would barely have enough to cover planned expenditures for 2009. It is clear that the government will have to come after the middle class to pay for their spending orgy.
- Third, the government is funded by creating inflation to cover what can not be borrowed or taxed:
- The problem with this is that the money the government prints is used by the government to cover its deficit, while your assets get devalued as a result. It is just another form of taxation that affects every single person.
If you liked the Jimmy Carter years, you will love where we are headed under Obama. Here was our economic scorecard in 1980, which was Carter's last year in office:
· Interest rates were at 21%
· Inflation was at 13%
· Unemployment was at 7%
· The combination of these caused us to invent a new word: "Stagflation"
After four years of Obama's spending and taxation policies, I'm afraid our economic scorecard will look like Carter's - or worse.
It's interesting to note that Republican Senator Judd Gregg from New Hampshire turned down Obama's offer to be Secretary of Commerce. He did this because he had no faith in Obama's economic policies. In fact, here is what he had to say about Obama's budget:
· "This budget represents a clear and present danger to the financial health of our country".
· "This plan spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much".
· "It is a massive expansion of debt, an unsustainable level of spending, and a deficit-generating machine that will bankrupt the country".
Ronald Reagan told us that "A government big enough to give us everything we want is a government big enough take away from us everything that we have."
Margaret Thatcher told us that "The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Embarrassingly, we are being warned by former Socialist countries to avoid the same mistakes that they made.
· The Czech Prime Minister called the US stimulus package the "way to hell".
· Russian President Vladimir Putin warned "Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence is a mistake."
· Even Communist China warned the US not to devalue the dollar through reckless government spending.
What is happening in Washington threatens to transform America from a constitutional republic of limited government and free and independent citizens into a European socialist state that will chain the entire world to our bank accounts. Our government is becoming more burdensome than the autocratic British monarchy that we revolted against two centuries ago.
Thomas Jefferson warned us that "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
His warning is an urgent one for us today. We are at a dangerous tipping point in our democracy. Roughly fifty percent of eligible voters pay federal income taxes, and the remaining fifty percent do not. Once that ratio becomes unfavorable for us taxpayers, we will be exposed to an electoral majority that could choose to simply vote our wealth away. We are starting to see this happen now, with Obama, Pelosi, and Reid spending a trillion here and a trillion there.
I'm here before you today, as an average American taxpayer, because I am taking a stand.
I'm done apologizing for the American values of liberty, individual rights, and private property. The US Constitution and the Declaration of American Independence are the two greatest political documents ever written.
I'm done believing that we have to surrender our rights for our political system to work. There can be no compromise with my life, my liberty, and my right to pursue happiness. There can be no compromise with the Socialists and radicals in Washington.
It's time to take a stand, to make our voices heard, to challenge our leaders, and to refuse to back down. The 2010 election cycle is our opportunity to launch another shot heard round the world, just like the shot heard round the world that American patriots launched in 1775 at Lexington Green in Massachusetts.
We taxpayers need to become activists! The radicals that have taken over the federal government have a powerful grassroots organization. Using groups like ACORN, Media Matters, and MoveOn.org, the radicals have flooded the voting booths with armies of "victims" who will vote Democratic in hopes of leeching onto American taxpayers to get all of their needs and wishes fulfilled.
We need to stand up and confront this socialist threat to our country now! If Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are still running this country eight years from now, the American way of life will be irretrievably lost. The programs that they are implementing day after day in Washington will be almost impossible to reverse. Once nationalized health care is fully implemented, there will be no undoing it. Once illegal immigrants are waved across the border and given free education, health care, and other social benefits, there will be no undoing it.
Vice President Joe Biden tells us that "it's our patriotic duty to pay more taxes." I say that it is our patriotic duty to remove these tyrants from office!
It's tea party time!
Thank you!
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