Book em Danno...and put it on my Government Charge Card!
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
I was fingerprinted for the eighth time yesterday.
I'm getting so good at this, soon I won't even need an officer to do it for me anymore. Bonus: With all my past checks for licenses and certifications, I move through the system that much faster!
The officer at UCSD said it should take a week or two to get my results.
So why bother, considering all my prior clean background checks?
The GREC (Georgia Real Estate Commission) requires a clean criminal history less than 60 days old before they'll accept my California real estate license as valid there.
Works for me. The DOJ needs my $32 anyway.
I just look at it as contributing a small portion of my $27,000+ share of the national debt, which recently cracked 8 Trillion dollars. That's nine zeros people. As in tens of thousands of dollars in debts accruing every second. $50,000 more accumulated as you read that.
China won't have to call on an army to destroy us, just an overdue IOU.
What's scarier about the deficit is that less than 2 years ago, it was ONLY 7 Trillion dollars. At this rate, I think I'll face 50% federal taxes before I die, just to ensure that Medicare, Social Security, and Interest owed on our massive debt is paid.
Our kids will have to get second jobs just to pay their taxes.
If this is what a small government minded Republican administration does, we can only fear what a free spending Democratic one might do to further bury us.
My simple advice to Congress: When you're in a hole, the first thing you should do is put down the shovel and quit digging.
Actually, don't take my word for it. Listen to what your fellow Congressman Collin Peterson of Minnesota said over two and a half years ago, BEFORE both Katrina and Rita hit us and Bush pledged to rebuild the Gulf by doing "whatever it takes".
May our children forgive us for what we have done to them and may God have mercy on us all for our greed, apathy and shortsightedness.
------------
CONGRESSMAN COLLIN C. PETERSON
Minnesota - 7th District
http://www.house.gov/collinpeterson/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 9, 2003
CONTACT: Allison Myhre/218-847-5056 or 218-731-1657
Peterson says no to increasing the deficit and billing our kids
By Rep. Collin Peterson
In the first three months of the 2003 fiscal year the federal government borrowed $183 billion to pay its bills. In the last three months we borrowed $55 billion more to run the total deficit for just the first six months to a whopping $239 billion.
We should be taking a lesson from what's going on in Minnesota. When you're in a hole you should stop digging. At this point we are clearly in a hole - a big one.
On Friday, the House of Representatives passed - depending on who you listen to - either a tax bill or a stimulus package that makes the hole bigger. I voted no.
We know we have more bills coming -- primarily for military and nation building activities overseas -- but we don't know how much those bills are going to be. We're still fighting a war against terrorists in Afghanistan and also trying to rebuild that country, and we don't know how much this will cost.
We've just fought a war in Iraq and it looks like we will be maintaining troops and spending money to rebuild that country too, but we don't really have any clear idea of how much that will cost either.
Frankly, I'm discouraged a bit because very few in Congress and virtually no one in the Administration seems to want to talk about that or make any real effort to figure this out so we can work out a sensible long term budget.
One thing is clear -- we're going to be spending a lot of money and driving up the federal deficit to record levels because both Congress and the Administration would rather borrow money than honestly address the costs.
I'm not against cutting taxes. I voted for the President's first tax cut package, and I think there are good things in the bill the Republicans have put together, including further reductions in capital gains tax rates and increased small business expensing. And there were also good things in the Democratic plan, although the majority leadership blocked any opportunity to debate it or vote on it.
If this debate were truly an honest effort to improve the federal tax code there are any number of changes I would have promoted, including an exclusion for equipment sales so that farmers could sell their machinery to their children on an installment plan, without taking the entire tax hit up front, and tax credits to promote ethanol and biodiesel. They would be trying to fully fund transportation projects to create infrastructure investments that put people to work and create economic activity.
With that said, there are problems with the Republicans' bill. There is no consensus amongst economists on how this package of tax changes will impact the economy, and some have suggested that some of the bill's provisions will probably create new problems without creating any real economic boost to the nation's economy. In addition, there is reason to think that some of the proposed changes could make borrowing MORE expensive for small businesses if dividend tax changes cause equity money to be taken out of the debt money market.
The bottom line for me and any number of other fiscal conservatives who worked hard to balance the federal budget - a goal we actually achieved only a few years ago - is that this is not the prudent time to be cutting taxes.
At a time when the government doesn't know how much debt we'll be taking on, when we don't know what our overseas war and rebuilding obligations are going to cost and when we don't have a consensus plan to invigorate our stagnant economy, we shouldn't be taking the gamble this largely partisan legislation represents.
We asked our young people to travel across the globe to fight a war, and now we're going send them the bill in the form of increased deficit spending. If the majority in Congress were acting responsibly we wouldn't be doing this now. We should not be asking future generations to foot the bill for our shortsightedness and lack of fiscal discipline.
---------------------------------
I'm getting so good at this, soon I won't even need an officer to do it for me anymore. Bonus: With all my past checks for licenses and certifications, I move through the system that much faster!
The officer at UCSD said it should take a week or two to get my results.
So why bother, considering all my prior clean background checks?
The GREC (Georgia Real Estate Commission) requires a clean criminal history less than 60 days old before they'll accept my California real estate license as valid there.
Works for me. The DOJ needs my $32 anyway.
I just look at it as contributing a small portion of my $27,000+ share of the national debt, which recently cracked 8 Trillion dollars. That's nine zeros people. As in tens of thousands of dollars in debts accruing every second. $50,000 more accumulated as you read that.
China won't have to call on an army to destroy us, just an overdue IOU.
What's scarier about the deficit is that less than 2 years ago, it was ONLY 7 Trillion dollars. At this rate, I think I'll face 50% federal taxes before I die, just to ensure that Medicare, Social Security, and Interest owed on our massive debt is paid.
Our kids will have to get second jobs just to pay their taxes.
If this is what a small government minded Republican administration does, we can only fear what a free spending Democratic one might do to further bury us.
My simple advice to Congress: When you're in a hole, the first thing you should do is put down the shovel and quit digging.
Actually, don't take my word for it. Listen to what your fellow Congressman Collin Peterson of Minnesota said over two and a half years ago, BEFORE both Katrina and Rita hit us and Bush pledged to rebuild the Gulf by doing "whatever it takes".
May our children forgive us for what we have done to them and may God have mercy on us all for our greed, apathy and shortsightedness.
------------
CONGRESSMAN COLLIN C. PETERSON
Minnesota - 7th District
http://www.house.gov/collinpeterson/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 9, 2003
CONTACT: Allison Myhre/218-847-5056 or 218-731-1657
Peterson says no to increasing the deficit and billing our kids
By Rep. Collin Peterson
In the first three months of the 2003 fiscal year the federal government borrowed $183 billion to pay its bills. In the last three months we borrowed $55 billion more to run the total deficit for just the first six months to a whopping $239 billion.
We should be taking a lesson from what's going on in Minnesota. When you're in a hole you should stop digging. At this point we are clearly in a hole - a big one.
On Friday, the House of Representatives passed - depending on who you listen to - either a tax bill or a stimulus package that makes the hole bigger. I voted no.
We know we have more bills coming -- primarily for military and nation building activities overseas -- but we don't know how much those bills are going to be. We're still fighting a war against terrorists in Afghanistan and also trying to rebuild that country, and we don't know how much this will cost.
We've just fought a war in Iraq and it looks like we will be maintaining troops and spending money to rebuild that country too, but we don't really have any clear idea of how much that will cost either.
Frankly, I'm discouraged a bit because very few in Congress and virtually no one in the Administration seems to want to talk about that or make any real effort to figure this out so we can work out a sensible long term budget.
One thing is clear -- we're going to be spending a lot of money and driving up the federal deficit to record levels because both Congress and the Administration would rather borrow money than honestly address the costs.
I'm not against cutting taxes. I voted for the President's first tax cut package, and I think there are good things in the bill the Republicans have put together, including further reductions in capital gains tax rates and increased small business expensing. And there were also good things in the Democratic plan, although the majority leadership blocked any opportunity to debate it or vote on it.
If this debate were truly an honest effort to improve the federal tax code there are any number of changes I would have promoted, including an exclusion for equipment sales so that farmers could sell their machinery to their children on an installment plan, without taking the entire tax hit up front, and tax credits to promote ethanol and biodiesel. They would be trying to fully fund transportation projects to create infrastructure investments that put people to work and create economic activity.
With that said, there are problems with the Republicans' bill. There is no consensus amongst economists on how this package of tax changes will impact the economy, and some have suggested that some of the bill's provisions will probably create new problems without creating any real economic boost to the nation's economy. In addition, there is reason to think that some of the proposed changes could make borrowing MORE expensive for small businesses if dividend tax changes cause equity money to be taken out of the debt money market.
The bottom line for me and any number of other fiscal conservatives who worked hard to balance the federal budget - a goal we actually achieved only a few years ago - is that this is not the prudent time to be cutting taxes.
At a time when the government doesn't know how much debt we'll be taking on, when we don't know what our overseas war and rebuilding obligations are going to cost and when we don't have a consensus plan to invigorate our stagnant economy, we shouldn't be taking the gamble this largely partisan legislation represents.
We asked our young people to travel across the globe to fight a war, and now we're going send them the bill in the form of increased deficit spending. If the majority in Congress were acting responsibly we wouldn't be doing this now. We should not be asking future generations to foot the bill for our shortsightedness and lack of fiscal discipline.
---------------------------------
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