"[G]reat as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending." That is a 1981 quote from Ronald Reagan, but it is equally apropos today.
February 6 is Ronald Reagan’s birthday anniversary, and in reading his first presidential inaugural address, the chilling accuracy of his observations about taxation and public spending struck me how they are still valid today; nay, they are more accurate than ever. The problem is that subsequent administrations did not take his advice, and at the present time, our pseudo-socialist welfare state and bloated federal government have achieved a national debt of incomprehensible proportions. And yet still we spend and spend and drive up the national debt.
The U.S. national debt is $38.7 trillion and increasing by the second. Already, we have seen how much the dollar has weakened in value and how hostile nations are trying to move in and usurp the dollar's status as world reserve currency. As of 2024, the Federal Safety Net estimated that the U.S. federal government spends over $1 trillion annually on welfare programs alone (the number is higher when state programs are added in). And as we've seen with recent federal investigations into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Somali daycare fraud, and California hospice fraud, there are literally millions of people gaming the system to enrich themselves unjustly off other people's money.
America currently has a "progressive" tax system, meaning that it punishes success with ever-higher taxes. The Founding Fathers utterly and rightly rejected such an unjust system. How truly Ronald Reagan observed during his inaugural address:
Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.
But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.
Related: Ronald Reagan, Champion of Freedom
Reagan was speaking about the economic collapse and government expansion of the Jimmy Carter years, but Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been equally destructive of the American character, economy, and government — if not even more so.
Unlike politicians from across the political spectrum today, Reagan applied a little common sense to his analysis of over-taxation and excessive spending:
You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.
That last sentence gives us the key to our future. We need to insist that our politicians truly slash spending and gut the Deep State, or Communist China and Russia will one day succeed in their dream of de-dollarization, and our foolish thriftlessness will backfire in spectacular fashion.
