Martin L. Gross - National Suicide: How Washington Is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z

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Table of Contents

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Other Nonfiction Titles by Martin L. Gross
(in order of publication)

THE BRAIN WATCHERS
An Analysis of the Psychological Testing Industry

THE DOCTORS
A Penetrating Analysis of the American Physician and
His Practice of Medicine

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY
A Critical Analysis of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis,
and the Psychological Revolution

THE GOVERNMENT RACKET
Washington Waste from A to Z

A CALL FOR REVOLUTION
How Washington Is Strangling Americaand How to Stop It

THE GREAT WHITEWATER FIASCO
An American Tale of Money, Power, and Politics

THE POLITICAL RACKET
Deceit, Self-Interest, and Corruption in American Politics

THETAX RACKET
Government Extortion from A to Z

THE END OF SANITY
Social and Cultural Madness in America

THE MEDICAL RACKET
How Doctors, HMOs, and Hospitals Are Failing the American Patient

THE CONSPIRACY OF IGNORANCE
The Failure of American Public Schools

INTRODUCTION

America had been mesmerized for almost two years by the dialogue of the presidential election. There have been continuous arguments and debates between the Republican and Democratic candidates, thousands of commentaries by the press, and endless personal attacks, all culminating in the typical quadrennial theater that has not advanced either the substance or the knowledge of our failing federal government.

It represents a sad commentary, one that has been standard for years, but is now worsening rapidly.

The election has resulted in the naming of a new president and reinforced the prejudices of partisanship. But it has failed, as always, in improving the basic knowledge of the American voter, adding little or nothing to our citizens woeful understanding of a dysfunctional Washington apparatus.

Today, just as after all prior presidential elections, American citizens are as poorly informed about the failed inner mechanisms of Washington as before. Instinctively, they remain part of the 74% of Americans who have lost respect for their government and its wasteful, inefficient, and hidden operation.

That condemnation and frustration will continue until, instead of being turned into political mutes by the parties, the candidates, and the press, the voters learn the truth about Washington. Only then will they be able to think intelligently about a government that is robbing its citizens of their treasure, their personal confidence, and their self-respect.

To that aim, this book is dedicated.

THE ROAD TO OBLIVION

OVERSIZE DYSFUNCTIONAL FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT, FAULTY MANAGEMENT, FISCAL
STUPIDITY, FIERY PARTISANSHIP, AND
AMAZING IGNORANCE

Americas politicians tend toward grand, hyperbolic statements about the federal government that often have no grounding in reality. In January 1996, in his State of the Union Address, then President William Jefferson Clinton stated brazenly: The era of big government is over.

The assembled Congress cheered loudly, though they knew, of course, that this was a ludicrous comment. The statistics support the reality. In the 8 years of the Clinton administration, the federal national debt grew by $1.4 trillion and has never receded in its continual upward trend. The debt was $4.4 trillion in 1993, rising to $5.8 trillion in 2001 at the end of his administration.

In 2000, Americans elected another bold boomer, President George W. Bush, who several times expressed his desire to cut the size and cost of government, in opposition to the Democrats historic tendency, as he said, to tax and spend. Several times, he pronounced that it was his intention to balance the budget and cut federal spending. The reality once again was quite the opposite. He did cut taxes for most Americans, but the federal giant continued its brazen upward cost under his compassionate conservatism, which finally meant overwhelming, unnecessary spending.

During young Bushs 8 years in office, the national debt grew by over $3 trillion, making, once again, a mockery of still another politicians word. Perhaps a third of this was the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but even domestic spending greatly exceeded that of Clinton, himself a master of largesse with the taxpayers money.

The administration was controlled by a Democrat in 1993, then by a Republican in 2001, both with fiscal failures. In 2009, it once again returned to Democratic control, with even greater spending matched to fiscal distress.

Today, the term billions is a modest one as the federal government initiates a new vocabulary of trillions in deficit and debt. For 2009 alone, we are informed that the annual deficit will rise to $1.85 trillion, an alarming failure that will continue at almost a trillion a year for some time.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the deficit for 2010 as $1.4 trillion. According to the presidents 2010 budget, in the period 2010 to 2019 the national debt would grow by $9.3 trillion, almost doubling that frightening obligation, and raising the debt to an astronomical $23 trillion, four times larger than in 2000.

Meanwhile, the national debt rises inexorably, second by second, some $5 million a minute, or $720 millionalmost three quarters of a billion dollarsevery day. By 2010, it will increase the national debt for each American family of four to $160,000.

Not only is the era of big and growing government alive, but it is comfortable and jealously protected by both political parties. Today that government, which is living and expanding on more borrowed money, has in fact a stronger, more overwhelming, more frightening destiny than ever before.

America has adopted a spending pattern similar to that of a spoiled profligate child of a wealthy man who looks to his parents to even out his accounts. But in the case of the federal government, there is no parent to look to, and our wealth is not only suspect, but dissipating with every passing day.

Little wonder that the national debt, held by Americans, government agencies, and foreigners, has by the end of 2009 reached to more than $12 trillion, and will reach $13.5 trillion by the end of 2010. Even more frightening, there are some $57 trillion more in unfunded future obligations in Social Security, Medicare, and scores of loan guarantee programsdebt that America has no possibility of paying back under the present political and fiscal circumstances.

Most of the damage has been done in the last 30 years. In 1980, the federal debt consumed only 33% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Today it has reached 85% and in 2010 will reach 97% of the GDP, and 100% soon after.

We have been warned that we are indebting our children and grandchildren, which is true. But we forget that we are forcing debt on the current generation as well through higher interest payments, money lost today supporting the ever growing federal debt.

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