The Republicans, far right, alt-right, religion right all have the same claims when it comes to fiscal responsibility. They want a balanced budget, reduction in regulations, smaller government, less social safety nets, and religious freedom. They want tax relief for the “working” Americans and the American Dream for all.
However, it seems contradictory for that all to happen. For the American Dream to happen there has to be rules and regulations in place to ensure that there are not monopolies that crush the mom and pop shops. With rules and regulations there has to be someone in the government to oversee those…so smaller government not possible. More people in government means more money required to pay them, so more tax revenue is necessary.
The United States spends more annually on our defense than the next seven industrialized countries combined (https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison). China and India both have more people to protect than the US, yet we spend more in defense (http://worldpopulationreview.com/). By square miles, we are behind Russia and Canada, yet we spend more on defense (https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/top-10-largest-countries-by-area-1303712111-1). If we want to reduce some spending in our budget wouldn’t it be prudent to look at some of the big ticket items…say defense which makes up almost half of our discretionary spending? But the right (aka Republicans) aren’t even allowed to bring that up for fear of losing their seats to someone who keeps their mouths shut.
Balancing the budget doesn’t seem possible if we aren’t willing to take a good long look at where we are spending. Most people just point their fingers at Social Security and Medicare because they are social programs that everyone knows. However, those two programs have their own line item in our deductions in our paycheck, meaning they aren’t part of the discretionary spending but are a mandatory spending item…money in, money out. Therefore, they move to remove money from other social programs that they don’t feel is necessary and fall within the discretionary budget.
They aren’t looking to cut spending on FEMA, because they might need help rebuilding their third home that is sitting in a flood zone due to climate change. They aren’t looking to cut spending on Farmer’s Insurance because we need to maintain the pricing of food items so we have to pay some farmers not to farm certain crops and if the market should drop on a crop we need to fund those farmers to ensure they farm again next year. So where are they looking to make cuts?
Anywhere that their religious beliefs are out of alignment with the program. Good example is Planned Parenthood. This is a low-income health center nationwide that provides women’s health tests and visits. They provide pap smears, mammograms and 1% of their program is spent on abortions. Although it’s only 1% of what they do, the right wants to take 100% of their federal funding away. Seems a little excessive.
Recently there was a March for Life in D.C. where an estimated hundred thousand people carried signs and shouted “facts” stating that there were 42 million people murdered worldwide through abortions. 42 million sounds unfathomable until you remember that there are 7 billion people breathing on the planet… 0.6% of people on the planet.
Now looking at US numbers only, there were 639,169 abortions performed in 2015 (most recent numbers available) that’s 0.2% of the population. They are marching in the streets for 0.2% of the population. The marchers don’t want their federal taxes going to fund these abortions as it is violation of their religious beliefs…but it’s counter to their fiscal responsibility belief. Here’s how…
Say ALL abortions performed were priced at the national average price of $579 per abortion and ALL abortions were paid for by federal tax money; that means that $370M was used to ensure that 0.2% of the population didn’t take any natural resources from the planet. If instead of having an abortion, each of those fetuses were born and given up for adoptions, which on the average takes two years in the foster care system to accomplish, then $370M wouldn’t have been spent on ensuring they didn’t take resources..but how much would be spent in taking care of those additional 639,169 children?
On average, in the US there were 438,000 children in foster care in 2015 at an average cost of $25 per child per day. That means that we were already spending $3.9B on foster care children who typically stay in the system for two years, although 6% stay five years or more. Now, if we added the 639,169 children that we decided not to allow to be aborted to the foster care system that’s an additional $5.7B in spending. So, the religious “tax payer” is saying we want fiscal responsibility yet are willing to spending $5.3B more to ensure that there are 0.2% more people in the US. Logically, that doesn’t make sense to me…but I also have no religious affiliation.
If the abortion was paid for with federal money only its a cost of $1.51 per tax payer, while the foster care cost per tax payer to include the newly born 639,169 fetuses is $23.06. Mathematically, that’s an average annual cost difference, to each of the 138 million taxpayers in the country, of $21.55. Fiscally speaking it is less of a burden to the tax payer to allow the woman to decide if she wants to carry a child to term or not than to make her and then add the child to the overflowing foster care system. Of the half a million children in the system waiting to be adopted only around 135,000 are adopted a year…leaving more and more children in the system. Maybe the religious right should make it a point to adopt annually.
In the US, population 327 million, 22.6 percent are under 18 and 15.6 percent are over the age of 65 leaving 125 million people at an age where they can adopt. Of the 125 million people, an average of 105 million are religious (84% of the US population is marked as having some kind of religious affiliation). With an average of 438,000 children in the current system plus the 639,169 that they don’t want to be aborted, each of the 105 million Americans would need to adopt one new child a year until they reach the age of 65. I don’t see that happening.
It’s as if their mouths say one thing but their actions suggest something entirely different.
You are already home 