Conservatives: How often should we police the world with tax dollars?

Question

.....and is it because we won't have enough tax money to go around for all our world policing the reason you ***** so much about tax money for social programs giving their own money back for true deserving American citizens?

There is a difference between Charity and world policing......

Answer 1

Our young liberal friends seem to divide into two camps. There is the camp of enlightened progressives like Jacob Aronson that is dedicated to "Conserving and Consolidating the Progressive Liberal Tradition" and reforming government "along private-sector lines."
Then there is the angry left of Markos Moulitsas. In "The Case for the Libertarian Democrat." Kos sees real danger ahead as corporations become more powerful than
governments.
It is fine for these enthusiasts to propose, on the margin, what benevolent government should do next, but they completely miss the elephant in the room. There is one thing and one thing only for the Democratic Party to do, and that is to keep the checks coming to its millions of supporters. We are talking about big money. To understand why this is so let us take a look at government spending in the US. Not just the federal government, but all governments. Here is the projected spending by all levels of government on the five biggest government programs for 2007:

Government Pensions: $875 billion
Government Health Care: $850 billion
Government Education: $750 billion
National Defense: $650 billion
Government Welfare: $425 billion

Think of that. The primary role for government, they tell us, is to defend us from enemies foreign and domestic. But in the modern world we have to send the checks out to seniors, provide free and subsidized health care, and pay the teachers. Then we can worry about thug dictators and local street thugs. But where do these spending numbers come from? They are provided by a new website, usgovernmentspending.com. Usnmentspending.com brings you the facts on government spending using the latest in LAMP technology, exactly the kind recommended by the Google guys. And it provides sophisticated navigation technology so that you can drill down and look at the details, 194 spending line items in all. It sums up the overall spending numbers by stitching together two spreadsheets published by the federal government.

The federal budget numbers come from the file Table 3.2 - Outlays by Function and Subfunction: 1962-2010 in Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2008 published by the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The historical state-and-local government spending comes from State and Local Government Finances published by the United States Census Bureau.
Think about the numbers for a moment. They start with nearly a trillion dollars a year in government pensions-and baby boomers aven't yet started to collect their, I mean our, Social Security yet. Then there is $850 billion in government health care, mostly Medicare and Medicaid-and baby boomers haven't yet started to collect on our Medicare.
There is $750 billion in government education-K-12, universities, and the like. When the educators talk about underfunding education, what are they talking about? Finally, after this important stuff, we come down to the Pentagon, the veterans, and the military-industrial complex. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Enough with the
military-industrial complex routine already.

There is no doubt that the Pentagon and its military-industrial complex of defense contractors is a fearsome special interest that affects national defense policy in many harmful ways just as President Eisenhower warned us so many years ago. But the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex are only running a distant fourth place in the "fill-in-the-blank"-industrial complex stakes. Let us talk about the pension-industrial complex. You can read a horror story about it every day, like this one about the underfunded pensions of the State of New Jersey. Did you know that the payment of pensions to government employees is guaranteed in the constitution of many states? First things first.

Let us talk about the medical-industrial complex. $750 billion is a lot of money for the government to spend on a highly regulated system that hits a mere #40 in the life expectancy world rankings published in The Economist's Pocket World in Figures 2007 Edition. Some out-of-the-box commentators think that it will soon enter critical condition as people opt for health tourism.
Let us talk about the education-industrial complex. We spend $750 billion a year for that baby. Yet literacy in the United States has not significantly changed in the 160 years since centralized government education began in the United States. As I reported recently in The American Thinker: 15 percent of US adults [today are rated] as "proficient" in literacy and 13 percent "proficient" in numeracy." That is according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy.
In the current War on Terror, or clash of civilizations, we are being reminded that the war is a failure and that the Bush administration never had a plan in Iraq. In fact our liberal friends feel that the failures in Iraq are sufficient reason to abandon the whole thing as Bush's fault and a dreadful mistake. Get out of a mistaken initiative.
Good point, liberals. So why not ditch the whole mess of government pensions, government health care, and government education, bloody messes that eat up about $2.5 trillion a year, four times the budget of the Pentagon and 25 times the $100 billion a year cost of the Iraq mess?
Jacob Aronson and Kos are missing the point. Who cares if the government could be better-managed, or if corporations are becoming too powerful? That's kids' stuff. The only thing that matters for the next Democratic administration is to keep those trillions of dollars coming to the millions of faithful Democratic voters. Yes. We are talking about trillions.

Answer 2

Our tax dollars are wasted on much worse things than the primary goal of the government, protecting & preserving our freedom. In case you didn't know, the United States has been the defacto "World Police" & "World Daddy" for decades. We patrol shipping lanes around the world to make sure trade is possible. We help starving & sick people in every corner of the globe. We prevented the world from being dominated by Germany. We prevented communism from becoming the dominating influence in the world. I think it is time to look at reality. The United States is worth fighting for. The United States is the best country in the world and does more for humanity & freedom than any other country ever has. One last note. You also may want to check the Constitution and see the few & explicit powers it grants to the federal government. All other powers are left to the states. The federal government has only a few basic responsibilities and some of those include maintaining a military, conducting foreign policy, providing infrastructure, protecting the borders & managing & enforcing immigration laws. Beyond this they really don't have much power. I would much rather have my tax funds going towards the Contitutional duties of the federal government than going towards education, agriculture, or other social programs. These things should be left for the states to handle.

Answer 3

First of all. TRUE conservatives believe in less taxes and smaller government. Along with that conservatives believe in a strong military to protect American interest around the world. (see Ronald Reagan)

Secondly, who are the TRUE DESERVING AMERICANS you speak of ? If you mean people who work hard, yes they deserve to bring home more money and pay less taxes. However if you speak of those looking for a free hand out or those not willing to make the sacrifices necessary feed their children or put a roof over their head, what right do they have to take take your money or anyone Else's for that matter. Please show me where in the Constitution does it say the government needs to provide health care, feed, clothe and house it citizens. Last I looked the Constitution protects and guarantees people the right to pursue those freedoms on their own.

Answer 4

Clair - You really need to do a heck of a lot more research before you start asking questions. We conservatives don't want to have to police the world. Sadly the world does need policing and no other government (even the ones that the worst atrocities are occurring in) will step up and stop the violence toward our fellow human beings.

(Darfur - No other government is stepping in to stop the blood shed and even people on YA call for the United States to step in and do something about it.)

Answer 5

I tell you what, Clair. If you can convince the rest of the world to step up and take charge of other problems in the world, we'll stop being the police.

The EU was in complete charge of the Iranian nuclear issue.

We see how that worked out.

The Bosnian genocide happened in the EU's backyard and they did nothing. The US had to lead the way to end the genocide.

The UN allowed Saddam Hussien to use the money from his oil to build palaces all over his country instead of giving it to the starving and dying children in his country. They did nothing about it although they new it was going on.

The US/UK/AU had to lead the war on Saddam because no one else had the guts.

If you can convince the rest of the world to step up and do their part for what is right in this world, we'll stop policing.

GOOD LUCK!!

Answer 6

The Constitution lists prosecution of war and implementation of foreign policy as duties of the Federal government.

The Constitution does not list spending money on charity / welfare as part of its duties.

The 10th Amendment says that only the powers that are enumerated in the Constitution are allowed to the Federal Government.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, denounced Federal government charity: "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

Logically, then it must be that all the spending on charity, welfare, medicare, medicaid, social security, HHS, HUD, Education, Labor, etc, etc are not Constitutional.

So, does the Constitution matter or not?

Answer 7

You have to realize that we already have a great deal of freedom and privileges that others around the world simply don't have. Americans aren't any better than people around the world and other people are suffering much worse than we are. I therefore have no problem using our tax dollars to help those less fortunate escape oppression and every day danger.

Answer 8

I can see you're quite young. You have so little knowledge of just how much money the US has and how much they have in reserves. You really need to do some studying in books not the Internet. There's too much lying that goes on on the net and there's no way to see that it's all lies.

Go to your local library and do some studying and while you're at it, look into how much gold we have in our reserves and how much it's worth.

Answer 9

since i pay taxes, and I'm not a conservative i would say our tax dollars should go towards our recovery. Instead of going towards death. I'm only one man though.

Answer 10

Once again, your thoughts on Darfur?

Should the US send in troops to stabilize the region to protect aid workers and end the genocide.