The IRS Will be Hiring

By Alan Caruba

If Barack Obama is elected, the Internal Revenue Service had better double its workforce because the amount of cheating on tax returns will rival Italy’s.

The scariest thing about the final debate between the candidates is that both appear to be utterly oblivious to the way the Stock Market dropped 700 points on Wednesday after a brief rally the day before.

Hearing either candidate talk about spending billions to fix this or that was surreal. I don’t even know how deep in debt the nation is at this writing, but I am of the view that we don’t have billions to “fix” education, health care, or anything else. Of course, John McCain did talk about taking an axe to the budget and Barack Obama did talk about using a scalpel, but who’s kidding who here?

Any budget cutting would be an improvement over the last eight years of George W. Bush’s failure to veto any spending bill Congress, controlled by Republicans until 2006, sent his way. Only after a Democrat epiphany did W actually wield the veto in the name of fiscal prudence. By then it was too late and talk of $700 billion bailouts filled the air.

It is essential to remember that the current crisis is entirely the creation of Democrats. Starting with Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, exacerbated by Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s exploitation of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, ignored by congressional oversight, the Democrats own this one.

It’s no comfort that Speaker Nancy Pelosi cannot wait to get the House to enact a bushel of new spending bills. The Senate historically has been a break on the short-term Representatives (two years versus the Senate’s six year terms) who, when not devoting most of their day raising money for reelection, spend the rest of it on, well, spending the public treasury for various pet projects and special interests.

Congress seems to exist in some parallel universe that has no connection to the rest of the nation. Its disconnect can be seen in the way, since Jimmy Carter was in office, Congress has actively worked against any exploration or extraction of the nation’s oil, natural gas, and coal reserves. It imposed “windfall taxes” and other restrictions until now there are only three oil companies of any size, mostly due to mergers. Now Congress apparently hates coal, too.

Then there was the creation of the Department of Education, contrary to the Constitution that excludes federal involvement by not mentioning it. It effectively has nationalized the education system with a one-size-fits-all policy that totally ignores the fact that different children in different places learn at different rates. The failure of urban schools has less to do with the enormous amounts of money spent per pupil than the crime-infested, jobless streets they must walk to get to school. It’s not like their parents don’t want better schools. They do. The grip of the teacher’s unions makes that nearly impossible.

I could list other government programs, but the point is they all cost a lot of money and a lot of that money is just totally wasted. For example, the government has a host of idiotic programs involving “climate change” when no government on Earth can do a thing about the climate. Likewise, the only reason to maintain a “space” program is to hoist spy and communications satellites into position. Explore Mars? Are you kidding me?

John McCain and the Republicans are right about cutting taxes. If that doesn’t happen, this Recession I assume we’re in, will turn into a full-fledged Depression just like 1929. At that point, we won’t be able to borrow money from China, Japan, and elsewhere. At that point, it won’t matter who’s in Congress or the White House because they created the problem.