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To: TigerPaw who wrote (21272)	8/16/2001 9:51:50 PM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24042

The Clinton_Algor_Greenspam Recession is alive and well thank you. Some of the " Evidence " of Tax payer shafting and ripoffs rushlimbaugh.com TA washingtonpost.com washingtonpost.com On Tuesday night, I spotted a story on the Drudge Report that actually made me salivate. As you know, I constantly look for evidence to convince those of you who think that the government is somehow being starved for money when there's a tax cut, when in fact the government is bloated with cash. You are the people who believe that the government should never, ever do with less, that if the government does with less, we all get harmed - and Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, you name it, will all suffer. I get tired of this reasoning, because I get tired of the intellectual laziness that buttresses this notion that government should never do without a massive increase in its budget every year. I really do. I'm at my wits' end about it. I've tried a number of things to try to illustrate to people just how much money the government has, how much it gets by taxing us, and how much the government spends - a $2 trillion budget every year! It is not possible, as Tom Puff Daschle or any of the other Democrats say, that the government's hurting, that people are hurting, that we are somehow damaging people if the government doesn't get its full take. It just boggles the mind. A government that's going to, over the next ten years, collect $28 trillion in taxes, is said to be unable to "afford" a tax cut that totals $1.35 trillion - and it's all surplus money! A surplus, of course, means that the government will be returning money that's above and beyond what is needed to fulfill budget requirements. Yet still people fall for the notion that this is a risky scheme. So I see this Drudge story, and I say, "Maybe this will work." The story reads: "Government employees are on target to spend nearly $19 billion using official credit cards this year, a plastic shopping spree that was designed to make purchasing easier but often has been slow to detect abuse." "An employee in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles charged nearly a half million dollars, $500,000 in personal expenses over three years to her government credit card before she was caught. Education department workers misused their cards several times to buy pornographic materials from an Internet site." The banks that provide credit cards to federal agencies already have been forced to write off nearly $20 million in bad debts by employees in 2001. There are 3.1 million active government cards, folks. At least 15 agencies have more credit cards than employees! These 3.1 million credit card holders spent $19 billion on credit cards this year, and we still can't convince people that the government has far more than it needs. This is mind-boggling. It simply is incomprehensible. You listen to some people on the left, and you'd think the government is barely getting by, and the mean, evil Republicans want the government basically to starve - and all who benefit from the government to do likewise. Here we have $20 million in bad debt in addition to the $19 billion that was spent, and nobody's been punished. Well, I think this employee in the U.S. attorney's office probably was, although it's not specified. Nobody ever gets punished when the government wastes our tax dollars! All they do is raise our taxes to pay for things like Education Department porn, without ever asking if we can "afford" less in our take home pay. The government employee's union probably has a clause somewhere in the employment contract that says you can't do anything to people who engage in this kind of fleecing because "they're only trying to help the country." It's your money that's being misused. You are being taken for granted, and then lied to each and every day about how pressing the government's needs are and how those mean Republicans are trying to strip the government of all the money it needs to help people. It's just such a crock. It's just downright sick.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (21272)	8/16/2001 11:38:29 PM
From: Selectric II	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24042

Federal government accounting has been a shell game for decades. Bush hasn't done a thing in these few short months of his term that could either burn up the so-called surplus that Clinton bragged about and took credit for, or change the path of the economy to cause a recession. You know better, and you and I both know that you know better. Do you forget what was happening throughout 2000, or do you just want everyone else to forget? Funny how, ever since Kennedy was assassinated after three years of his term, liberals have lamented about how his term was cut short, he didn't have time to make an impact, and if he only had had time.... Yet, in 6 months, Bush has wrecked the economy? Pitooey. You and your think-alikes are too much. Propaganda, in my book.