All of us, at one time or another, have crossed paths with an obese individual with incredible slabs of fat. When I see such a person wobbling down the street, I’m tempted to ask, “Why don’t you eat less?” But obesity is caused by an insatiable appetite and a constant intake of huge amounts of food. And our federal government is very much like that obese individual, with an equally insatiable appetite for money, borrowed or taxed, in order to expand its body.
And just as obese individuals lose physical dexterity, our obese government has become increasingly inefficient, unproductive, and wasteful. It can’t even defend our borders. Our government — like all governments — does not create wealth. It consumes it at an ever increasing rate. And the more it consumes, the less money is available in the private sector, which actually needs it to create additional wealth.
A good example of government becoming needlessly fat is the creation of the Department of Education in 1979 by President Jimmy (Who?) Carter. Americans from colonial times have always been able to provide excellent education for their children without government involvement. So why did we need a Department of Education that now costs us $77 billion? It hasn’t improved education. In fact, it has made it worse. So why do we need it? We don’t. But it permits several thousand parasites to live off the taxpayer in comfortable middle-class style while doing nothing of value, and certainly nothing that can’t be done much better locally at the city or state level — as is happening daily in the private sector all over America.
Indeed, the home-schooling movement has proven that we don’t need government schooling at all.
But if you suggest getting rid of the ED, the leftists will scream loudly and clearly that conservatives want to destroy education for the poor. And who can be against education for the poor? People have forgotten that we had plenty of education for the poor before the department was created. But like the obese person who cannot stop eating, so the statists among our political class can’t stop making government fatter and fatter.
What about the National Endowment for the Arts? Didn’t we have arts in America before the Endowment was created? Yes, we’ve always had a flourishing body of artists in America creating all sorts of artistic works without government involvement. So why was the Endowment created? To give elitists a pile of government money to give out to their favorite friends.
The same can be said for the National Endowment for the Humanities. The liberal elite love to hand out taxpayer money to their favored writers, scholars, and dramatists. The Endowment not only plies the culture with funds it doesn’t need, it provides nice clean, well-paying jobs for the bureaucrats who run it. Do we need the Endowment? No, we don’t. So if we are going to put the federal government on a strict diet, let’s eliminate the Endowment. We can all live without it.
What about the National Science Foundation, created by an act of Congress in 1950? It’s 2012 budget is $7.767 billion, a piddling sum compared to the ED’s budget of $77 billion. Its purpose is to promote the progress of science and to advance “the national health, prosperity, and welfare, and to secure national defense.” The national defense part is justifiable, although you would think that the Department of Defense could take care of that.
Do we need a federal agency to promote scientific development? If you studied the massive number of volumes published by the Patent Office, you would discover that Americans were inventing all sorts of things without any government assistance — inventions that would promote national health and prosperity. As for welfare, what’s that got to do with scientific development? Indeed, the Patent Office still issues patents for all sorts of inventions by ingenious Americans and even foreigners.
So do we really need a National Science Foundation? Probably not, so why don’t we at least cut its size in half? Bill Gates didn’t go to the government for help in creating Microsoft. Indeed, the whole computer industry was created by individuals working out of their garages to produce a world revolution in computer technology.
What about the Department of Energy? Do we need it? It was formed in 1977 by Jimmy Carter after the oil crisis. According to its website, “The Department’s missions and programs are designed to bring the best scientific minds and capabilities to bear on important problems. It is an integrator, bringing together diverse scientists and engineers from national laboratories, academia, and the private sector in multidisciplinary teams, striving to find solutions to the most complex and pressing challenges. This Strategic Plan lays out the Department’s leadership role in transforming the energy economy through investments in research, development of new technologies, and deployment of innovative approaches.” Its budget is $27 billion.
Note that it says nothing about gaining energy independence from foreign oil. It says nothing about encouraging oil exploration in the United States — particularly in Alaska. It says nothing about stabilizing the price of gasoline. What it tells us is that we are going to throw a lot of money at scientists and engineers, working in national labs, universities, and the private sector in “multidisciplinary teams” to develop new technologies, none of which will run a car.
Do we really need all of that? Of course not, but our pork-fattened government will find any excuse to spend more money.
One of the reasons we have an income tax is so that government can gorge itself with more money than it needs and become increasingly fat. No different with individuals.
In order to become obese, you have to eat a lot of food, much more than you actually need to maintain your health. And in order for government to become obese, it has to take in more money than it actually needs. Our government creates new departments in order to use the limitless amount of money the taxpayers send to Washington. The less money the citizens send to Washington, the fewer useless programs the government would be able to create.
For many decades, the hapless American taxpayers have been providing government with more money than it needs. Rather than give money back to the taxpayers, Congress will invent new ways to spend it, by creating new programs that add to the yearly budget.
Just as the obese often indulge in binge eating, so does our government indulge in binge spending. We are told that obese people have psychological problems and cannot control what they eat. Our federal government is equally out of control, and ObamaCare is just one case of the fed’s binge spending.
I remember seeing pictures of an obese individual so big that, when he needed medical attention at a hospital, he had to be lifted by a crane in order to get there. So when you think of our obese government requiring a budget of $4.24 trillion, think of that poor chap, so fat that he had to be lifted by a crane.
The total worth of all American billionaires is $1.3 trillion. So if the government confiscated the total worth of all these billionaires it would not even pay for half of Obama’s budget. In addition, we have a national debt of $14.3 trillion. To keep the government as fat as possible, it has had to borrow trillions of dollars.
Our government in Washington needs to be put on a strict weight loss program that will reduce its size. We can no longer afford to support this humongous fat slob that the Democrats want to make fatter. It’s time to put the federal government on a strict diet that will reduce its size and bring down its weight to a level commensurate with what is needed.
China is lean and mean. Russia is lean and mean. But America is fat and slap-happy with an administration that has plans to spend even more money. Michelle Obama is against obesity in children. She should also be against obesity in government.
