Federal Spending Scam 9-7-24

The US Congress uses October 1 as the deadline for passing appropriation Bills each year. If they fail to pass the Bills, they resort to passing a Continuing Resolution to authorize spending at current levels until they can get the votes to pass a new Bill by the House and Senate.  Continuing Resolutions can last for weeks or months every year and create a distraction from solving serious problems. The result is always that Congress fails to address costly issues in time to prevent more disasters. 

There is always a “pile-on” by lobbyists, large campaign contributors, industry associations, labor unions, company owners and all contribute to campaigns. Elected Officials get the bulk of their campaign contributions from “big bucks” contributors. These politicians promise to vote for the Bills the lobbyists write for the contributors and horse trade their votes for reciprocal votes from other politicians.

The US spend $245.1 billion on Medical Research in 2020 and $45 billion on Medical Research in 2022. COVID 19 was expected to cause deaths in 2% of the US population, but by the end of the Pandemic, COVID 19 caused deaths in 1% of the US population. COVID 19 threw a spotlight on the dangers of “gain of function” research and took the time to develop a virus shot from 5 years to 1 year. It ignored the fact that 100 million US citizens had Natural Immunity. Public Health controlled by Governors of States was exposed as a mistake. US citizens should determine whether or not they receive a flu shot. Businesses and schools should not be closed by State Governors. These changes in Public Health Law should be made by Congress to allow this decrease in control by Public Health bureaucrats. Their role should be to track and report patient conditions and let citizens decide how they will respond to the information. We now know that N95 masks are the most effective protection from air-borne viruses.

The Climate Change Hoax is another “distraction” to increase federal spending based on a “questionable theory” that has little support for emergency action. Other current distractions include US funding contributions to the Ukraine War, Middle East Terror actions and the Gaza War. 

The US Federal Government collected $4.47 trillion in revenue in 2023. In FY 2023, the federal government spent $6.13 trillion. Since the government spent more than it collected, the deficit for 2023 was $1.70 trillion.

The US Federal Government received $1.33 trillion in Social Security Taxes in 2023 and paid out $1.1 trillion in Social Security benefits. The Surplus was $23 trillion.

The US Federal Government received about $400 billion in Medicare Premiums payments in 2023 and paid out $839 billion in Medicare benefits in 2023. The deficit was about $489 billion. Social Security and Medicare are referred to as “Mandatory Spending”. The Federal Government pays Social Security Benefits and Medicare Benefits and no annual Bills are required or need to be passed to authorize payment based on current structures. The rest of the Government spending is revered to as “Discretionary Spending”. Congress may choose to tighten Benefits or put deficits on the “credit card” to add to the National Debt.

Trump wants to maintain current Social Security and Medicare Benefits and expand the US Private Sector Nominal GDP to offset deficits that may occur in Social Security and Medicare and eliminate Social Security Benefits from the tax calculation so that seniors won’t pay taxes on their Social Security Incomes. 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader