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How do you feel when you think of the word “bureaucracy?†I did an experiment and wrote down all the adjectives I could think of when I thought about bureaucrats and bureaucracy. Stop for a moment and do this yourself. What were your results? All negative?
Do we need bureaucrats?
A Bureaucrat’s job is to stand between the lawmakers who create public policy, and the people. For example, if the recent Obamacare Mandate (tax) is established, bureaucrats will multiply in front of our eyes to oversee all the new policies, new taxes, new programs, and they will set up the “new rules†on how you and I are governed.
Who oversees the Obamacare tax?
The tax collectors (Internal Revenue Service) oversee the Obamatax, of course. The new health care bill is the largest IRS expansion, at least since the introduction of withholding taxes, which was first introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.[1]
An analysis by the Joint Economic Committee estimates the added IRS staff at a potential 16,500 new personnel for collecting, examining and auditing new tax information mandated on families and small businesses by Obamacare.[2]
Do not misunderstand me; the public sector has many jobs that are critical to the working of our nation and communities for a peaceful existence. These jobs include fire departments, law enforcement, military, people who work in the judicial system, public parks and recreation, street lighting, and many other small collateral services.
Past to Present: Seeing Double…triple, quadruple
The current excessive bureaucracy and spending burden impacting our national budget rose greatly through the expansion of duplicated agencies, czars, and programs – but who’s counting?
We should all be counting, as we pay for these countless programs!
To clarify, we have 15 Cabinet Agencies, 34 Czars, and over 1300 Federal and State Agencies! How did this happen when the framers’ main objective of governance was:
- To provide an environment for citizens to succeed and fail by their own choices.
- To protect the citizens so they can live and fulfill their lives by their own choices.
Public Expansion
Because 34 “czars†aren’t enough, Washington is becoming the home of a myriad of new federal programs, agencies and commissions to oversee the government-run health insurance bill:[3]
- 159 new bureaucracies
- 47 new agencies, boards, and commissions
- 68 new grant programs
- 12,000 pages of already-issued regulations
- 16,500 new IRS agents, who are needed just to enforce
- 20 new taxes
The 2,801-page government-run health bill threatens to:[4]
- Cost taxpayers at least $1.4 trillion over 10 years
- Mandates the purchase of private health care for all Americans
- Create an onslaught of economic and legal consequences that kills jobs
- Drive up the cost of health care for families
- Make the powers of the federal government limitless
It is apparent we have moved far away from our founders’ vision of free enterprise and individual rights. Our elected officials are consumed with serving their own interests, continuing out of control spending, and promoting government making life’s decisions for you and I.
You don’t need an accounting degree to understand that our existing federal programs have put us in an extremely dangerous position as a nation. We have literally climbed to the end of the cliff and are dangling by a thread. You and I must vote to end the fiscal insanity in its tracks this November. As we implement the health care law, this expansion of government will surely throw us over the edge if we do not repeal and replace it.
Who Keeps Bureaucrats on Life Support?
You do. I do. WE do! Ultimately it’s as simple as this: you and I are forced to pay for a “trade†we had no part in. This is done through taxes, regulation, etc. This certainly is not the True meaning of Capitalism where all the trading partners believe they receive equal or greater value in the trade. Federal Bureaucracy is growing and the consequences will fall like dominoes:
- Unnecessary expenses
- Costs that are passed on to consumers
- Limiting of the private sector’s natural growth, or worse
- Shrinking of the private sector, and by that
- Reducing the taxes that are collected, thereby
- Worsening the federal budget deficit
Our bloated Federal Government has also created rules that are now limiting our ability to provide energy autonomy for the nation.
A New-Old Deal
The current administration mirrors FDR’s progressive vision which turns citizens with individual choices and freedoms into citizens governed by the state. Our nation’s current path empowers a bureaucracy and belief of “what is best for your own good,†which in reality redefines your rights as a mere perk of the “general welfare†system.
There’s one thing all Americans are fed up with: Government lording over our lives thinking they know what is best for us. Share this article with others and highlight the section on Public Expansion. We must take back control. We must hold each other, as well as our congressman, accountable for not one, but many election cycles to come.
The path to this end is less, not more, government, czars, programs, and agencies.
Resources : [1] Tax History- http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/60CCA25AAE80903885256FF6006EA59D?OpenDocument[2] The Examiner – http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/5655
[3] Freedom Works – http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/lt1800/view-edit-the-supreme-court-decision-on-obamacare
[4] Ibid
It is often said about the huge banks that they need saved because they are “too big to fail”, when it comes to the Federal government, in nearly every concievable area, their programs are “too big to succeed”.
Actually, the government intervened when greed overtook many in the market, banks, big business. Now, it is seen as overreach, which may be partly correct…the pendulum just keeps swinging.
When I said abortion and capital punishment are conflicting, I meant that killing in any form is wrong. Renaming it capital punishment softens what it actually is into something that is necessary. Doesn’t God tell us all life has value? While a criminal of that degree should be punished, why kill? Does God really want us to be that final judge?
These issues are anything but simplistic, I agree.
Lizze,
Thanks for the comments! There’s no doubt we live in a would that includes many evil people. There was a time when folks would actually be careful and avoid getting themselves fooled by snake oil salesmen, but government protections made that unnecessary… which means the only people we need protecting from now are in the government. But seriously, I get that there is some good found in practical regulation, it’s just that even there we have excess which does nothing but slow down the economy, cost consumers more, and raises our taxes. While there may be some that would take advantage, the market can manage that on its own unless the government is trying to manipulate the economy… that’s when most of the opportunity crops up for big mistakes like the housing bubble and credit crunch. When business is forced to act against its self-interest and the interest of society by the government on a large scale, no matter how beneficent the government appears to be, catastrophe looms.
I can’t understand what you see about capital punishment and abortion that makes it seem that conservatives are not interested in individual rights. We care about the individual rights of the victims of violent crimes, we care about the rights of the perpetrators who take those rights away (and justly pay the price for their actions), and we care about the individual rights of the unborn. A woman carrying an unborn baby has individual rights as well, but among them is NOT the right to kill her child, no matter how inconvenient that child might be.
I’m also intrigued that someone as intelligent as you would find punishing of the guilty and protecting of innocent life “conflicting”. Or should I assume your argument will be that Capital Punishment is “cruel and unusual” and that a “fetus is not life”? The fact is, you trivialize life by examining these two topics with the simplistic thought that conservatives would see these as nothing more than “killing” and “not killing”. That is just way off the mark.
While I understand much of what you write and agree with excessive ANYTHING, it’s good to recognize that you say “Federal Bureaucracy is growing and the consequences will fall like dominoes” you must also realize that left unregulated some capitalistic ways, dishonest and corrupt lead to a fall of dominoes that left us where we are today economically. No matter what you will have those who take advantage.
I also find it interesting that conservatives tout individual rights only when it applies to certain things ie guns, free eneterprise etc, but when it comes to other, they claim to know what’s best for all…capital punishment and aborttion (these are also very conflicting).