Fighting terrorism and rebuilding New Orleans, Iraq and Afghanistan are straining the federal budget. Harder to understand is why a Republican White House and Republican Congress, during a time of low unemployment and solid economic growth, have presided over a huge expansion in social spending.
In 25 major social programs, enrollment increased an average of 17 percent from 2000 through 2005. This comes as population increased only 5 percent, reports USA Today in a startling tally of the recent welfare expansion.
The reason for the increases, according to the newspaper's well-substantiated analysis, is that more low-wage workers are eligible for food stamps and other forms of welfare. Medicaid has added 15 million beneficiaries and Medicare has added a costly prescription drug benefit.
What should concern taxpayers is that while spending on social programs increased by 22 percent in the five-year period, the increase does nothing to help solve the future funding shortfalls facing Medicare and Social Security.
Here's another way to look at it. The average household pays $18,000 in federal taxes, which is about $4,000 less than what's needed to balance the ballooning federal budget. Within 10 years, taxes would have to rise to $25,000 per household to balance the budget, the conservative Heritage Foundation calculates. But taxes can't increase 39 percent without destroying jobs and slowing growth.
That means federal expenses must be brought under control. The National Taxpayers Union says that if federal spending had increased only 4 percent a year since 2001, Bush would have been able to boast a budget surplus of $58 billion next year.
Instead, the national debt soars, future tax increases loom and voters wonder what happened to the fiscal conservatives they sent to Washington.
