federal debt

Are you voting with your head or your heart?

Do you use common sense when you go into the voting booth, or do you vote for the person you like most today, the one that said what you want to hear?

To vote with your head is to know what you are voting for…

To vote with your heart is to vote for what feels good today, forgetting about tomorrow. What will you do?

You may like the way a candidate looks or what he just said. But do you know what he stands for or what his record is? Have you really given any thought to what he has been saying?

Maybe he promised to pay unemployment benefits for two years, pay for your healthcare, and provide contraceptives.

This all sounds good, then he says that he will lower your taxes, the prices you pay for gas and your house note. Now you really feel good about him.

Then he tells you that he is going to do this by taxing the rich folks and the corporations that have some how gotten rich by taking advantage of you.

Do you think he can keep these promises? Do you believe he intends to keep these promises? He is after all a member of that same wealthy group.

But lets assume we can rely on him to do what he says he will do.

According to the Internal Revenue Service the so-called rich, those making over $250 thousand a year make up only 2 percent of households in America…

In 2010 there were roughly 114 million households in America and two percent of that number is 2.28 million

Our federal deficit as of March 14 2012 is over $1.3 trillion.

According to Gallup’s web site if our government taxes those making $100,000.00 or more at a 100% tax rate, the taxable income produces $1.62 trillion, a bit less than what our federal deficit will be for this one year.

Let’s say they tax the rich at the proposed 39% that would give us $6.31 billion.

Some of our budgeted items are already more than that…

• Medicare/Medicaid is over $800 billion.
• Social Security is over $700 billion.
• Defense is over $695 billion.
• Income security (which pays unemployment benefits) is over $390 billion.
• Our National debt is over $15 trillion.
National Debt Clock

So if our over promising candidate took every thing the rich have and gave it to us we still wouldn’t be able to pay off the deficit for one year, let alone provide all the promised benefits.

Who’s money or property will our government have to seize next to keep the promises that appealed to our hearts and not our minds?

It’s time we started looking beyond the feel good promises and start looking for common sense solutions.

Is it really important that Romney doesn’t eat grits?

Or that Santorum talks about social issues like abortion, birth control and gay marriage?

I hope all voters will be more interested in the issues that matter most, like the economy, national security, and jobs.

This time around, we need to vote with our minds.

Did Newt Gingrich single handedly balance the Federal Budget?

Our federal budget was balanced from fiscal year 1998 to 2001.

Newt Gingrich, said “I helped balance the federal budget for four straight years, the only time in your lifetime we had four years of a balanced budget. We paid over $400 billion in federal debt off.”

GoAnimate.com: Newt and Herman talking politics in a bar by Msvoterblog

Gingrich was off on both claims concerning the budget. The budget was indeed balanced for four years, but it’s a stretch for him to take credit for more than two of those years. As for paying off $405 billion in debt, the data we found shows the debt actually increased during Gingrich’s four-year tenure as speaker by more than $800 billion. We rate Gingrich’s claim False. Politifact.com

The problem is that Gingrich left office in January 1999. That means he was in office for only 2 of the four years.

Gingrich may have had a hand in balancing the budget it’s hard to tell…

Of course the Democrats give the credit to Clinton and the growing US economy. And there is some truth to that.

It may be true that he helped, but I don’t believe for a minute that Newt can take full credit for balancing the country’s budget for four years while being in office for only two of the four years he claims.

In November 1998 Gingrich announced that he would not run for office in 1999. He left office in 1999 and it was not until the end of 1999 that the house approved the budget for 2000.

The Deficit Reduction Act of 1993 passed by congress in 1993 to reduce the deficit by $500 billion from 1994 to 1998 exceeded all expectations in reducing the deficit.

An equally if not a more important influence on the budget deficit, was the booming economy and huge gains in the stock markets…

The so-called dot-com bubble brought in hundreds of millions in unanticipated tax revenue from rising salaries and taxes on capital gains.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the 1990s was the longest economic expansion in the history of the United States, lasting exactly ten years from March 1991 to March 2001…

Did Newt Gingrich really have that much of an effect on an economy that was already in the longest expansion in our history when he came into office?

This question is important only because Newt Gingrich is making a run at being our next president. If his claims are more than political rhetoric, then they are significant and a good reason to give him consideration.

If however, he is stretching the truth and blatantly misleading us to gain favor, then we need to be very careful about anything he tells us. It is possible that he will mislead us, and that’s something we’ve had enough of.

What do you think about it?

Did Newt Gingrich single handedly balance the Federal Budget?

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