CNSnews has;
Future Generations by Walter E. Williams December 4, 2012
Is there any reason for today's Americans to care about what happens to tomorrow's Americans? After all, what have tomorrow's Americans done for today's Americans?Moreover, since tomorrow's Americans don't vote, we can dump on them with impunity. That's a vision that describes the actual behavior of today's Americans. It would be seen as selfish, callous and ruthless only if it were actually articulated. Let's look at it.
Businesses, as well as most nonprofit enterprises, by law are required to produce financial statements that include all of their present and expected future liabilities. On top of that, they are required to hold reserves against future liabilities such as employee retirement.
By contrast, the federal government gets by without having to provide transparent and honest financial statements. The U.S. Treasury's "balance sheet" does list liabilities such as public debt, but it does not include the massive unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and other federal future obligations. A conservative estimate of Washington's unfunded liabilities for the year ending in 2011 is $87 trillion. That's more than 500 percent of our 2011 GDP of $15 trillion.
Former Congressmen Chris Cox and Bill Archer have written an article — "Why $16 Trillion Only Hints at the True U.S. Debt," The Wall Street Journal (November 26, 2012) — pointing out our dire economic straits. They say, "When the accrued expenses of the government's entitlement programs are counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax collections annually. That is the total of the average annual accrued liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs, plus the annual cash deficit." Let's analyze that.
Washington would have to collect $8 trillion in tax revenue, not to pay off our national debt and have reserves against unfunded liabilities, but just to avoid accumulating more debt.
Recent IRS data show that individuals earning $66,000 and more a year have a total adjusted gross income of $5.1 trillion. In 2011, corporate profit came to $1.6 trillion. That means if Congress simply confiscated the entire earnings of taxpayers earning more than $66,000 and all corporate profits, it wouldn't be enough to cover the $8 trillion per year growth of U.S. liabilities.
Given this impossible picture, the message coming out of Washington, especially from our leftist politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress' appetite.
In 2011, Congress spent $3.7 trillion. That turns out to be about $10 billion per day. According to IRS statistics, roughly 2 percent of U.S. households have an income of $250,000 and above. By the way, $250,000 per year hardly qualifies as being rich. It can't even buy a Learjet.
Households earning $250,000 and above account for 25 percent, or $1.97 trillion, of the nearly $8 trillion of total household income. If Congress imposed a 100 percent tax, taking all earnings above $250,000 per year, it would bring in about $1.9 trillion. That would keep Washington running for 190 days, but there's a problem because there are 175 more days left in the year.
The profits of the Fortune 500 richest companies come to $400 billion. That would keep the government running for another 40 days, to mid-July.
America has 400 billionaires with a combined net worth of $1.3 trillion. If Congress fleeced them of their assets, stocks, bonds, yachts, airplanes, mansions and jewelry, it would get us to at least late fall.
The fact of the matter is there are not enough rich people to come anywhere close to satisfying Congress' voracious spending appetite. The true tragedy for our future is that there are millions of uninformed Americans who will buy the political demagoguery and treachery that our problems can be solved by taxing the rich.
Thank You Professor Williams
And So, with a better idea of What kind of Financial Ruin we're plummeting into, let's look at the Republican Response in the US House.
RedAlert Politics has;
Conservatives Removed From Financial Committees By GOP House Leadership
By /// December 3, 2012
The fissure between the GOP establishment and Tea Party members in Congress blew wide open Monday evening when conservative members of Congress were suddenly removed from House financial committees.
RedState’s Erick Erickson was the first reliable source to share that conservatives were reportedly being removed from the House’s finance related committees by Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio).
Shortly after, Roll Call reported that Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona had been removed from from the Financial Services Committee “for bucking the party line too often.”
“This morning Congressman Schweikert learned there was a price to be paid for voting based on principle. That price was the removal from the House Financial Services Committee,” Rachel Semmel, Schweikert’s spokesman, told POLITICO. “We are obviously disappointed that Leadership chose to take this course, but Rep. Schweikert remains committed to fighting for the conservative principles that brought him here.”
Curiously, conservative Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina was selected to replace Schwikert on the committee, potentially undercutting conservative’s complaints that Schweikert was removed for political reasons. Likewise, sources with knowledge of the situation indicated to both POLITICO and Roll Call that committee changes were made at the request of committee chairs. Meaning incoming Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who is currently the GOP Conference chair, not Boehner, could be responsible for snubbing Schweikert.
Roll Call later added that Walter Jones of North Carolina had also been removed from that committee. Additionally, Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan and Tim Huelkamp of Kansas were removed from the House Budget Committee, which Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is currently chair and will continue to chair in the next Congress.
A press release issued by Huelskamp’s spokeswoman Karen Steward says that the freshman Rep. “was given limited explanation for his removal but clearly his consistent, principled, and conservative votes have riled the GOP Establishment.”
“It is little wonder why Congress has a 16 percent approval rating: Americans send principled representatives to change Washington and get punished in return,” Huelskamp said in a statement. “The GOP leadership might think they have silenced conservatives, but removing me and others from key committees only confirms our conservative convictions. This is clearly a vindictive move, and a sure sign that the GOP Establishment cannot handle disagreement.”
After news broke conservatives, were immediately outraged. Tea Party organization FreedomWorks even called for a ‘hostile takeover’ of the party by Tea Party activists, and began a lobbying effort to get Schweikert, Huelskamp and Amash back on their respective committee.
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