Spending Time in Washington

John D’Aloia Jr

John D’Aloia Jr. is a retired navy captain and a submarine commander (of the U.S.S. Thomas Edison,1970-73). His work is published in a number of places, including The St. Marys Star, The Wamego Times, and The Kansas Christian.

Where, oh where, do my tax dollars go? It is spending time in Washington. The dollars are flowing like water in the gutter after a cloudburst. If there is a rationale to hand out your tax dollars, Congress will find it, ignoring the constitutional limits on its ability to shackle you. Congress may look upon itself as Robin Hood, but it is no better than King John. Congress mouths the words “the common good” while taking from everybody. It differs from King John because it cares not to whom it gives the spoils as long as the act garners the favor of the press and buys votes. Congress does not wield a sword, it uses the IRS and its awesome power to strip a citizen of resources and personal freedom. As did both King John and Robin Hood, Congress ignores the basic laws of the land, in our case, the Constitution. The only apparent restraint on its actions is the fear that if it gets too heavy-handed, the electorate will shake off its lethargy and actually rise up at an election to give every last one of them, the entire kit and caboodle, a one-way ticket home.

As the spending and taxing process proceeds in Congress, it is apparent that the politicians have little to fear. The electorate is perfectly happy being fleeced and made slaves of a socialistic state. There is no consistent, overwhelming outcry that enough is enough. All too many people have decided that government owes them a living. They are happy being tax receivers, living off their neighbors’ work, using the power of government to satisfy their demands. They care not about freedom. They recognize not the dangers posed by the all-powerful state. With every new program, with every increase in spending, we are marching down the road to socialism, blindly ignoring the concrete historical examples of the results of socialism-the creation of an elite that lives off the misery of its citizens.

It does not take much effort to come up with examples of Congress greasing the skids to socialism, spending dollars that should never have made it into the fed’s coffers in the first place on projects and programs that exceed its constitutional authority. Nowhere in the Constitution do you find authority for the nation to provide tax dollars to help the election chances of an incumbent, but it happens as a matter of course. The newspaper The Hill reported that a Rhode Island representative, facing sagging poll numbers, was able to steer $90 million to his district, including $8.3 million for a senior center, $4 million for a college building, and $150,000 for the Trinity Repertory Company’s theater. The closer we get to an election, the more frequent will be the self-laudatory mailings to inform voters about how much bacon the elected official was able to bring home. They try to out-Robin Hood each other. Voters in Alaska will no doubt hear that one of their senators got $1.5 million for the Anchorage zoo and voters in New Hampshire will hear that their representative brought home $140,000 for an ice arena. The Kentucky Coal Mine Museum is going to get $475,000 and San Francisco’s Fine Art Museum $175,000. In Santa Barbara, California, the feds are spending $50,000 of your tax dollars to pay for the removal of tattoos.

More examples. Fairbanks, Alaska, is getting $2.25 million for alternative winter recreation activities. An event center at the Dona Ana County Rodeo and Fair, New Mexico, will get $1 million. $190,000 is going to the Motor Racing Museum in Spartanburg, South Carolina. $1.5 million is going to protect mountain gorillas in Africa and $1.5 million to protect orangutans. To aid entrepreneurs in Far East Russia, you are parting with $3 million tax dollars.

All this is but small potatoes. Senator Fred Thompson published a top ten list of horrible examples of federal fraudulent and wasteful use of your tax dollars. At the top was Boston’s Central Artery (a highway,) the most expensive federal infrastructure project in the nation’s history. Its cost is now estimated at $13.6 billion, up from the original $2.6 billion estimate. Medicare pays out almost $12 billion a year in fraudulent payments. The Department of Interior cannot find more than $3 billion it holds in trust for American Indians. The judge overseeing the case called it “fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form.” This is what you get when you have a government that ignores its founding document, is too big for effective management, and contains elected officials who believe it is their sacred duty to spend their way to political nirvana, stomping across your backs and through your wallets in the process.