| May 2012 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
Why isn’t the government accountable as to how to pay for the programs it enacts?
Federal and State governments are constantly voting to spend money without any requirement to account for how they’re going to get that money. The recent new $400 billion prescription drug entitlement is a huge example. Many people believe there’s no way to pay for it at all. And because it’s an entitlement, there’s no way to reduce it once it’s enacted. (There must be some way to cut these entitlements—but that’s a subject for another post). Much of the public is left scratching our heads, wondering what the heck our elected officials are thinking.
Another example cropped up today: Social Security checks could go south of border.
WASHINGTON – U.S. and Mexican officials are discussing an agreement that would allow millions of Mexicans to return home and still collect U.S. Social Security benefits.The controversial proposal that could transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security payments south of the border has riled some Republican lawmakers. They worry that it could reward scores of undocumented Mexican immigrants with a U.S. pension, draining the country’s Social Security trust fund at a time when its future solvency is in doubt.
...”Let’s be honest, there are millions of Mexican immigrants contributing to the Social Security system and the U.S. economy,” said Katherine Culliton, an attorney with the Washington, D.C., office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It’s only fair they get back a benefit they deserve that will keep them from dying in poverty.”
Sure—they’re breaking our laws, entering this country illegally, and then they are forced by the laws of ours that they can’t figure out how to break, to contribute taxes. Let’s give ‘em some money!
“Talk about an incentive for illegal immigration,” said GOP Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. “How many more would break the law to come to this country if promised U.S. government paychecks for life?”
That’d be a great Constitutional Amendment: any government program has to be accompanied by documentation as to how it would be paid for.
