Nanny State Costs Continue to Rise

The AP is reporting that the financial overhaul law that President Barack Obama and Democrats enacted last year will cost nearly $1 billion to implement this year, according to Congress’ chief auditor.

On Wednesday Congress will hold hearings to examine the costs of the law. Republicans, who solidly opposed the legislation, have said it goes too far and will stifle companies, while Democrats have defended it as a needed curb to help ward off future economic  melt downs.

The agency spending the most money on the law will be the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which the GAO estimated will need $329 million. The Federal Trade Commission will also be responsible for enforcement of some of the new provisions of the law.  

The answer to any problem is always the same in Washington D.C. Pass more laws, create more government agencies and hire more bureaucrats.  And of course that requires SPENDING more money that the federal government does not have.

The U.S. federal deficit as percent of GDP is now approaching 10%, more than double the average over my my lifetime (56 years).  Here’s a graph of federal Health Care spending from the GAO for FY 2002-2022. 

Can you see all that money that Obamacare is saving?  Me neither.  And guess what?  Federal spending on health care will be higher than this chart shows. MUCH HIGHER. The GAO always “low balls” these figures.

What about the cost of “General Government”?  GAO only projects general government spending until 2016 because they ran out of room on the graph!

So, what the heck, lets create another agency.  What’s one more going to hurt?  Heck, we created a Department of Homeland Security to consolidate the two Immigration and Customs agencies in the Justice and Treasury Departments.  Now we have three and a half Customs and Immigration agencies with twice the number of employees; CBP, CIS, ICE, HSI and even the government employees in those agencies don’t know who does what. The agency names and duties have been constantly changing since DHS was established in 2003. 

 

No Mas!  This has to stop.  Over the 32 year period that I was employed by the federal government there were numerous government shutdowns because Congress could not agree on a budget.  The world did not come to an end.  Social Security checks were delievered most people didn’t even noticed that the federal government had been shut down.

My agency expanded from a 12 person office to a 125 person office and became LESS productive!

There were also numerous federal hiring freezes over the three decades.  Yet, not only is there not a hiring freeze in effect now, the government is growing larger by the day.

We are all headed for more than a little big of hell, if the madness does not stop now.  Call or write your Congressman and tell them to shut the government down, if the Democrats will not agree to cut federal spending drastically. Most of us won’t miss anything.  If that is what it takes to get federal spending under control and start to bring the deficit down, so be it. 

The only parts of the federal government that we really need are “essential services” and they will not be shut down. This is what worries the Democrats and the Unions and why they are determined not to shut down the feds. What happens to the Democrats if Congress shuts down all but the essential services of the federal government and nobody even notices except the bureaucrats who aren’t getting paid?