Ukraine and Israel need military aid. They need United States taxpayers’ money.
But citizens here need help too.
We have an open border and unprecedented, illegal immigration. It takes money to initially take care of all of these people—money that could be used to assist legal, tax-paying citizens or at least used to pay down our national debt. And some of these illegal crossers are not migrants. They’re individuals who desire to harm us. Our national security has been gutted under the Biden Administration.
We have high inflation and high interest rates. The gold standard of achieving the American dream through home ownership is slipping away.
We have soft on crime policies. Many do not feel safe in their own neighborhoods.
Citizens want and deserve benefits derived from their taxpayer dollars.
Outspoken foreign policy hawks try to convince us that we can do both—take care of the homeland and help allies abroad.
But it’s tougher than it used to be. Corruption, incompetence, and wasteful spending within the federal government—from both elected leaders and unelected bureaucrats—is so pervasive that it hinders our ability to remain a world leader.
We’re starting the year with a national debt of $34 trillion.
Somehow, we’ve mindlessly accepted being trillions of dollars in debt. Perhaps the average citizen believes that if we have that much debt, it must mean that we have a lot of very important needs.
The truth is that we have a lot of government blunders.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, recently released the annual Festivus Report. It details $900 billion in wasteful government spending.
Interest, alone, on our debt was $659 billion. We’re spending more than a half a trillion dollars a year on debt that should not even be there. Every person and every business must balance a budget to survive. The one place where sound financial prudence doesn’t happen is with the federal government.
The National Institutes of Health (taxpayer-funded agency) signed a $33.2 million contract with a business to house, feed, and care for 3,000 monkeys before they’re shipped to various research labs around the country. That’s $11,000 per monkey. Contrast that with what a foster parent receives in subsidies in order to provide a home for a child who—for many different reasons—cannot remain with his or her birth family. Some foster families receive as little as $5,000 annually. We spend more to take care of monkeys than caring for children.
The United States Agency for International Development (taxpayer-funded agency) shelled out $6 million to the country of Egypt in order to boost tourism there. Stupefying.
A full $38 million in COVID payments went to dead people. Apparently it’s perfectly acceptable to admit this data failure, but mainstream media and party liberals are outraged when any effort is made to ensure that vote counts are accurate and elections are fair.
The Department of Defense (taxpayer-funded agency) blew $169 million by letting military equipment—such as engine, transmission, and tank parts—sit outside in the elements until they were ruined. This is no big surprise when we left $7 billion of exceptional military equipment with our enemy when we hastily withdrew from Afghanistan.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (taxpayer-funded agency) spent $477,000 on giving female hormones to male monkeys. There is no limit to the government’s obsession with transgenderism.
And the Biden Administration doled out $236 billion in improper payments—money sent to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason. There are only 330 million living in this country. That means every man, woman and child had to come up with $700 just to take care of government nothingness.
There’s more on the Festivus Report. Unfortunately, there’s more.
And it’s this incompetent, wasteful, corrupt activity that will hinder our ability to help our international friends when they’re in need.
We used to be able to keep the homeland burning brightly while firmly situated as a world leader.
Ah. Those were the good old days.
We can no longer do both.
Moving the Conversation Along 