The Curmudgeon Chronicle -#200

THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE ©

AN IRREVERENT VIEW


Time Line: January 19, 2007
Date Line: Flemington New Jersey

The Federal Reserve Bank’s Chairman says we are spending too much and our budget is not balanced. He names the culprits as the older citizens of the US who paid taxes for their entire working lives pursuant to a contract with government to buy Social Security and Medicare coverage. (You know, just like a deal with The Defaulters Loophole Assurance Society.)

Gee Whiz Mr. Bernanke, I thought you had been awake through the past four years. Looks like you were asleep so I can’t blame you for thinking that the budget crisis is due to citizens getting Social Security and Medicare coverage. Now that you are awake and seem concerned, let me point out a few things you seem to have missed.

First there is that war in Iraq. I don’t want you to think I’m a nitpicker but the trillion dollars spent or committed to that adventure would solve Social Security and Medicare needs for the next two centuries and leave cash on the table for luxuries like housing, education, infrastructure, and scientific research.

Second, there are “earmarks” and “pork” that Congress considers its proper due. Not too much of an issue you say? Well; a billion here and a billion there adds up to a tidy bundle. The amount includes enough to get some of these people re-elected and their special interest groups satisfied. I have heard a figure of $300 billion in such projects as the annual direct and indirect costs to the US.

You think I am overstating the case? Try one such project on for size. The new House has just adopted legislation that rolls back a minimum of fifteen billion of annual give-aways to Big Oil. Over the past three years that is forty-five billion dollars. Maybe not enough to excite you, but I think it would have gone a long way towards reducing the “crisis” in Social Security that you are concerned about. By the way the odds against it passing in the Senate are astronomical.


The guy who appointed you, (and who is also upset about the social security program), destroyed our budget surplus; increased the size of government; rewarded his cronies; took job opportunities for the working class and gave them to illegal aliens; and still fosters the most profligate government we have ever seen in this country.

I suggest you make the following recommendations in your next speech to Congress.

1. Quit funding wars we should not be fighting
2. Quit spending tax money on personal projects
3. Quit giving tax money to special interest groups
4. Quit trading tax money for campaign contributions
5. Quit letting drug companies dictate prices to Medicare without negotiation
6. Quit supporting the administration’s wasteful programs
7. Quit permitting false bookkeeping practices by GAO; and
8. Tell the truth about what things cost before you spend another penny of our money.

Mr. Bernanke I don’t expect you to pay much attention to those comments because they do not address “macro-economic” issues. On the other hand, if you apply basic arithmetic to your job you’d catch my drift and the country’s needs, as well as see the truth.

As to your job: You can raise and lower rates till Hell freezes over but that won’t bring manufacturing capabilities back to the US; won’t provide an answer to poverty and under-education, and won’t solve the crisis we are facing.

We must eliminate the true causes of our financial weakness. I assure you Sir, those causes do not include the recipients of Social Security but I can make a hell of a case for a certain President who shall remain nameless.

H. S.