Blame the Poor!

A recent letter to the local rag specifically cited the War on Poverty as the reason for the $21 trillion national debt. Among the opinions offered are  that the entire debt should be blamed on the poor and an almost Dickensian  nostalgia for debtor's prisons and the workhouse. The writer stopped just  short of endorsing transportation to Australia as a cure for American social ills!  Could there be other reasons for the current national debt? Assuming that the "War on Poverty began in 1965 that means a span of 57 years in which this writer attributes the debt to poverty programs. Could there be other less worthy causes?

The Vietnam "war" and the associated veterans benefits will hit over $1.7 trillion, Iraq and Afghanistan will add another $7 trillion. History will judge both as unnecessary and counterproductive.

An estimate of excessive drug cost spending adds another huge chunk, Medicare alone, adding over $3/4 trillion in just the last 5 years.

$25 billion annually goes to farm subsidies with the average recipient already earning a household income of more than $100,000 annually before subsidies. Ten members of the House Agriculture Committee  received a total of  $3.5 million in farm subsidies from 1995 to 2014.  Farms owned by Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn.) received at least $8.9  million between 1995 and 2014. Both hypocrites,  LaMalfa and Fincher, have invoked the Bible to attack federal anti-hunger programs.

In the most recent Federal budget, just about half of all spending was for Social Security and major Medical programs (mandatory spending),  with Defense spending, which is the lion's share of discretionary spending, a close third overall. Here's a secret, tax breaks, written into the tax codes by the same Congressman who bitch about spending on food for hungry children, are responsible for a loss of federal income which is larger than the total discretionary spending in any recent fiscal year.  Not all tax breaks are bad,  but many favor only the wealthy and those who really don't need them (can you say capital gains?) What I just pointed out implies that by revising the tax code to remove sweetheart deals for petroleum and other undeserving causes we could actually recover more in new tax revenue than we currently spend on defense - without significant impact on the average taxpayer!   

Finally, it is true that the last President had huge deficits, the worst year, 2009, inherited in his predecessor's budget. He also had a record recession. In fact, considering  increased Federal spending per administration,  Obama comes in at just 1.4%. Reagan - 8.7%, Bush 43 - 8.1%. Both Republicans spent it on military buildups.

Knowing the readership of the newspaper in question, and the age of the community, it's a good bet that the writer of the original letter is a recipient of both Social Security and Medicare.

So...tell me again how the poor are bankrupting America?