Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

Does the size of government increase corruption?


While the size of government does not necessarily correlate with the size of the corruption problem, the bigger the government the greater the tax load on the citizenry. The question is then are we getting real value for our tax dollars in a fair manner across the board, or are we being conned into a significant redistribution of wealth by the government, which I believe is outright theft.

This is one of the stated goals of the current administration; to tax the rich heavily and redistribute the proceeds, and not tax perhaps 40-60% of the citizens. In my opinion, all of us should pay taxes at some rate, perhaps by one of the so-called flat or fair tax proposals that tax consumption and not earnings. (Yes, this would require an amendment to the Constitution to rid ourselves of the income tax.)

Paying a share of the tax burden is the act of a stakeholder in the nation, as opposed to a freeloader on the system, and far from reducing freedoms, it strengthens our collective freedoms immeasurably. The old dictum still holds: “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” which this and other administrations seem to have ignored deliberately, while increasing the indebtedness of the nation by trillions.

There does exist massive corruption in the government today in Medicare, a situation that I can attest to personally by the billing and review systems between Medicare, hospitals, the insurance companies and the individual–me and family members– now in seven different cases in four different hospitals. I doubt that ObamaC will correct these problems.

To my knowledge, no one has proposed to undertake a deep and thorough non-partisan review of all government agencies, bureaus, commissions, committees, boards, and the like, of which there are at least 1700 or more, in order to reduce functional duplications, reduce staff and budgets, or eliminate a significant number of these perennial hobby-horse dollar holes, perhaps with savings in the billions of dollars. (Go to LSU.com to see the official listing of government entities.)

Many of these organizations follow the “grow or die rule” that says they must increase their role, mission, staff and budget each year (or try to!).There should be a commission established along the lines of the BRAC commission that takes a multi-year look at this drag on the budget, and forces non-political reductions of much of the nonsense, and perhaps not a little bit of corruption as well.

Labels: Government

# posted by Mannning @ 5:07 PM