Government Spending

Here's a fun game, it's called "Guess how much the Interstate Highway System cost." Yes, those 47,000 miles of road spanning North America from the Atlantic to Pacific; signed into law by Eisenhower back in 1956 and taking 30 years to build. Adjusting for inflation, how much did that run the U.S.?

Well... the Stimulus Bill was $787 billion, and the Federal Government is running a yearly deficit of $1,600 billion... So it has to be more than that, otherwise the government would be borrowing the equivalent of an entire extra Interstate Highway System every year... which would be insane. Right?

Ok, time's up. The winner’s whoever's closest without going over. Ready?... And the answer (in 2010 dollars) is... $460 billion... So the government doesn't borrow one "the highways" per year, they borrow three and a half "the highways" per year... God fucking damnit. How is that possible?

Did the Stimulus Bill secretly build another set of roads they haven't told people about?... Oh, maybe it's a surprise! Has anyone noticed 50,000 miles of sheets suspiciously covering what appears to be a flat surface?... No?... Well, then fuck.

The Federal Government’s spending a total of $3,800 billion this year, but when you add in the State and Local levels, total Government spending’s almost $6,100 billion. To put that into perspective, the total adjusted gross income reported to the IRS by everyone combined in America on their 2009 tax returns was only $7,600 billion and the economy hasn’t grown much since then.

In other words… It’s a fucking spending problem. No economy could survive with this type of weight dragging it down. It's like goddamn cement shoes... And what do you get for your trillions? How are the schools?… fucked. How are the roads?… shitty. And they will be no matter how much the Government spends because politicians aren’t interested in fixing them. They're interested in campaign contributions and reelections. Some people are a little weary about privatizing various services, but honestly... nobody could do a worse job than the Government.

Good news, everyone! Until yesterday, America was steaming down the path to bankruptcy and disaster... Thankfully, future generations will be able to look back at this turning point in the history of human freedom and know that when the chips were down, John Boehner definitely didn't cave... We've run the numbers on this proposed Obama/Boehner compromise and the spending cuts are dramatic:

Yes. Those are what everyone's calling "significant cuts". That feeling in the pit of your stomach... that's the realization that your government's bullshitting you... also, you're pretty hungover.

The Federal Government admits that last year it wasted a total of $125 billion in “improper payments” alone. Now if you spent a wild night engaging in rough (yet sensual) coitus with 3 hookers, but your accountant later fucks up and sends out checks to 4 hookers, only the payment to the 4th would count as an "improper payment". It's not the money spent on (what some might call) bad ideas, it's the extra money wasted while spending money on bad ideas.

$125 billion is a Goddamn hilarious amount of money. It’s only slightly less than the GDP of Hungary. It’s enough to buy around 2,700 tons of gold. It’s more than the combined Federal taxes paid by: Nevada, Delaware, Rhode Island, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Idaho, Hawaii, West Virginia, Maine, South Dakota, Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Vermont. Yes, combined. The people in those states paid the Federal Government a total of almost $116 billion in 2009... 16 states worth of tax revenue, pissed away.

Now, upon presentation of these facts, liberals inevitably respond with some variation of: "We don't need to cut program X, we just need to cut the waste, it needs to be run better." Liberals… In all of human history and everything we've discovered about human beings, can you name a single large government from any age which consistently handled and spent its peoples money responsibly for any significant amount of time?...

You must have three or four examples right off the top of your head… there's no possible way you could be so naive and irresponsible as to promote seeding more power to an organization with a monopoly on the use of force without a single example of it ever being a good idea. Liberals this is an honest question… What the fuck do you think about all day? If we could peer inside your mind, would we hear "my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard..." on an infinite loop, or would it just be static?

It's time tea party groups (and similar pro-liberty organizations) from those 16 states form a coalition... name it "The Gang of 16" (giving politicians the taste of their own medicine) or "The Forgotten States" or possibly some hilarious double entendre. Contact your State Representatives and strongly "suggest" they propose bills declaring solidarity with the other 15 states. Bring this up at town halls, get the word to your federal representatives. They should be holding press conferences on the steps of the capital with fellow congressman from those 16 states. When everyone starts realizing where all that money missing from their paychecks is going, any argument for bigger government will seem laughable.

The best part of the recent battle over Government spending was the fucking hilarious parade of liberals embarrassing themselves on television. The shit that came out of these people's mouths should discredit each of them once and for all. (Hey politicians... next election, when you're running against these cocksuckers, here's your campaign ad: Play clips of them decrying "over the top rhetoric" and calling for a “new tone” then cut to these clips.) First up, Rep. Louise Slaughter on defunding Planned Parenthood:

Wait… Hitler made the Jews turn in receipts to get reimbursed for expenses? Fuck, that guy really was an asshole (someone needs to tell Louise that Hitler was very pro government-funded abortions). So, are liberals actually saying the only reason you could be against the Federal Government giving your hard earned tax dollars to Planned Parenthood is that you want women to fucking die?... Yes.

That'll be hard to beat... unless Rep. Ed Markey discovered some sort of GOP super secret conspiracy to destroy the world:

Yep, he nailed it... anyone who thinks the Government shouldn't control the gas you exhale is clearly trying to destroy the world. Obviously they're all either suicidal or heavily invested in spaceships and terraforming technology. (Side note: We always thought GOP stood for Guaranteed Orgasm Party... in retrospect, the crowd's reaction to our parade float seems totally understandable.)

This is huge... Internet videos are the modern day pamphlets. When the small-government crowd learns to use them to effectively communicate complex ideas, (and look good doing it) that's when everything starts to change. Rep. Paul Ryan's new video doesn't have quite as many topless girls and explosions as we would have preferred, but hey... it's a start:

Whenever a politician tries to describe exactly how much $1 trillion is, they always end up using useless analogies like: What was going on a trillion seconds ago, or how many times a stack of a trillion one-dollar bills would wrap around the moon. All that tells you is that 1 trillion is a fucking shit-load, but you already knew that. The problem is, when you think about money, you think about how much shit you could buy with it. Is it enough to buy a computer, enough to buy a car, enough to buy a house? That's how the deficit needs to be explained:

Update: By popular demand, we've published a profanity free version that's safe to send to your grandma.