Restrain
it One More Time!
We all want a sound fiscally
responsible government, so here I list some ideas for solutions to set the
government right. Let’s deal with the
national debt first. Debt for a
government can mean the difference between a government surplus with low taxes
and a government with large deficits, higher taxes and painful cuts to programs
that some people rely on like our seniors.
So how do we reform to take on the debt?
First you create a strict limit on how much debt a government can take
on. This limit can be based on
government revenue, surpluses with both in combination with how much interest
the debt will accumulate. Or you can
have a sinking fund which pays off the debt itself through its own source of
revenue and can be used to limit debt to the amount of money collected in the
fund (it does not include the interest on the debt incurred for that year).
Another limitation on the debt is
deciding under what circumstances a government may borrow money. Under no circumstance should a government be
funding its activities by the accumulation of more debt. Nor should a government’s deficit spending be
carried over until the next fiscal year at least that is if you want a balanced
budget and prevent the further need to borrow more money. So I say limit debt to only the most
essential things such as to finance infrastructure or in the federal
governments case the military in war time (as it is unforeseen spending). Of course, if money is borrowed to finance a
war it should be limited to only when Congress has declared war.
The final way to limit debt is to
create a supermajority vote to issue bonds of any kind (a.k.a. debt). I think a 2/3 majority vote would be best.
Add onto this the ability of a tax payer to sue in court to challenge any form
of illegal debt issuance and the United States America
Then there is another issue,
taxes. Excessive taxation can be just as
bad as burdensome debt. One idea to
prevent burdensome taxes is a supermajority vote to increase taxes or to create
new taxes. This will make it almost
impossible to level new taxes on the public unless such an increase becomes an
absolute necessity. Another option is to
limit the types of taxation. The three
major types are property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes. In general, only two forms of taxation should
exist at any given time so as to prevent tax burdens from becoming too
large. Property taxes are probably the
fairest because only rich people can own million dollar homes. It can be based on the square footage of
living space or the total amount of square footage of your whole property. A sales tax is also fairly fair, i.e. it only
taxes you on what you buy. The Fair Tax,
Vat tax and the like are all forms of sales tax. If done in the right way (no picking of
winners and losers) it can produce and promote economic prosperity. Income taxes can also come in many forms as
well and is typically the least fair. It
encourages unequal treatment of the rich and poor and when taxing business
income spawns lobbyists for rich companies to get tax breaks and leave less
financially stable small businesses to be slowly stamped out. Even though I do not like taxes in general as
it is legal theft of ones property or taxing something that rightfully belongs
to you, I will take any tax, and I mean any, that rids us of the income tax and
all other types of taxes that breed lobbyists and harm small businesses.
The final piece of a sound
government is a balanced budget, but who’s going to make it? It’s probably best if the legislative branch
of government makes it and then the President or Governor as the case may be
cuts out the pork with both the Line Item and Line Reduction Veto’s. At all times however, the budget must account
for all funds, whether it is taxes, debt, and future costs of current
programs. Spending itself can be limited
via caps on the federal, state or even local government’s budgets, but these
must be designed carefully or it will become detrimental. It might be best to limit what percentage of
the total revenue can be spent on what like 15% for infrastructure, 20% for
research and development etc., but again it must be designed carefully.
There are lots of things we can do
to fix government and make it fiscally sound.
Also you must remember a government that borrows is no longer 100% loyal
to its citizens for its loyalty is now divided between its creditor and
you. No government should have divided
loyalties to its people. Let us together
make government responsible only to us, the citizens of America
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