The Patriot Post® · Americans Pay More in Taxes Than on Food and Clothing

The national debt continues to balloon in spite of the fact that Americans are paying more on taxes than for food and clothing. As Investor’s Business Daily explains, “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American spent an average of $9,562 on food and clothing but a whopping $16,749 on federal, state and local taxes. That excludes housing, which costs the average American about $17,819 a year after paying property taxes.” And “according to the CBO, the federal government over the next decade will spend $56.59 trillion while taking in $44.19 trillion in taxes. That’s a $12 trillion hole in the budget.”

So it’s safe to say our federal government has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

On that note, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) released its annual report containing its recommendations for some 636 cuts that would reduce wasteful spending by $430 billion in the first year and upwards of $3.1 trillion over the next five. For example, CAGW suggests cutting the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which would trim spending by $1.8 billion over fiver years. The cutting of improper Medicare payments due to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement would also save another $18.1 billion over the same five year span.

The problem with making those cuts is that every slice of the federal pie has a constituency group. All Americans want to cut government spending — just not spending that benefits them. Cut it for someone else. And then nothing gets cut.

One thing’s for sure, this debt spending problem can only be ignored for so long.