Obamacare, Czars, Federal Agencies, Oh My!
How do you feel when you think of the word “bureaucracy?” I did an experiment and wrote down all the adjectives I could think of when I thought about bureaucrats and bureaucracy. Stop for a moment and do this yourself. What were your results? All negative?
Do we need bureaucrats?
A Bureaucrat’s job is to stand between the lawmakers who create public policy, and the people. For example, if the recent Obamacare Mandate (tax) is established, bureaucrats will multiply in front of our eyes to oversee all the new policies, new taxes, new programs, and they will set up the “new rules” on how you and I are governed.
Who oversees the Obamacare tax?
The tax collectors (Internal Revenue Service) oversee the Obamatax, of course. The new health care bill is the largest IRS expansion, at least since the introduction of withholding taxes, which was first introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.
An analysis by the Joint Economic Committee estimates the added IRS staff at a potential 16,500 new personnel for collecting, examining and auditing new tax information mandated on families and small businesses by Obamacare.
Do not misunderstand me; the public sector has many jobs that are critical to the working of our nation and communities for a peaceful existence. These jobs include fire departments, law enforcement, military, people who work in the judicial system, public parks and recreation, street lighting, and many other small collateral services.
Past to Present: Seeing Double…triple, quadruple
The current excessive bureaucracy and spending burden impacting our national budget rose greatly through the expansion of duplicated agencies, czars, and programs – but who’s counting?
We should all be counting, as we pay for these countless programs!
To clarify, we have 15 Cabinet Agencies, 34 Czars, and over 1300 Federal and State Agencies! How did this happen when the framers’ main objective of governance was:
To provide an environment for citizens to succeed and fail by their own choices.
To protect the citizens so they can live and fulfill their lives by their own choices.
Public Expansion
Because 34 “czars” aren’t enough, Washington is becoming the home of a myriad of new federal programs, agencies and commissions to oversee the government-run health insurance bill:
- 159 new bureaucracies
- 47 new agencies, boards, and commissions
- 68 new grant programs
- 12,000 pages of already-issued regulations
- 16,500 new IRS agents, who are needed just to enforce
- 20 new taxes
- Cost taxpayers at least $1.4 trillion over 10 years
- Mandates the purchase of private health care for all Americans
- Create an onslaught of economic and legal consequences that kills jobs
- Drive up the cost of health care for families
- Make the powers of the federal government limitless
It is apparent we have moved far away from our founders’ vision of free enterprise and individual rights. Our elected officials are consumed with serving their own interests, continuing out of control spending, and promoting government making life’s decisions for you and I.
You don’t need an accounting degree to understand that our existing federal programs have put us in an extremely dangerous position as a nation. We have literally climbed to the end of the cliff and are dangling by a thread. You and I must vote to end the fiscal insanity in its tracks this November. As we implement the health care law, this expansion of government will surely throw us over the edge if we do not repeal and replace it.
Who Keeps Bureaucrats on Life Support?
You do. I do. WE do! Ultimately it’s as simple as this: you and I are forced to pay for a “trade” we had no part in. This is done through taxes, regulation, etc. This certainly is not the true meaning of Capitalism where all the trading partners believe they receive equal or greater value in the trade. Federal Bureaucracy is growing and the consequences will fall like dominoes:
- Unnecessary expenses
- Costs that are passed on to consumers
- Limiting of the private sector’s natural growth, or worse
- Shrinking of the private sector, and by that
- Reducing the taxes that are collected, thereby
- Worsening the federal budget deficit
Our bloated Federal Government has also created rules that are now limiting our ability to provide energy autonomy for the nation.
A New-Old Deal
The current administration mirrors FDR’s progressive vision which turns citizens with individual choices and freedoms into citizens governed by the state. Our nation’s current path empowers a bureaucracy and belief of “what is best for your own good,” which in reality redefines your rights as a mere perk of the “general welfare” system.
There’s one thing all Americans are fed up with: Government lording over our lives thinking they know what is best for us. Share this article with others and highlight the section on Public Expansion. We must take back control. We must hold each other, as well as our congressman, accountable for not one, but many election cycles to come.
The path to this end is less, not more, government, czars, programs, and agencies.
Kassandra Kuehl is a writer and blogger with American Citizens for Economic Freedom (http://truecapitalism.org/). ACEF stands for accountability within congress, supports the Tea Party and Women’s Organizations. ACEF is founded by prominent business entrepreneur, Peter M. Vessenes. Follow at @cowgirl4liberty
