U.S Taxpayers Aren’t The World’s PiggyBank by Robert Socha

There is an incalculable error being made by those elected to lawmaking positions in these United States. As long as I have been alive and able to understand even a modicum of political shenanigans, our nation’s spending has gone unchecked! We the people have allowed it to continue.

We have.

We perpetually elect a throng whose disposition manifests sending our monies to foreign lands. The reason, however noble, our tax dollars (or the money the fed prints at an unsustainable rate) sent as usury worldwide is well beyond the scope and size of our government’s vested interests.

Our congress uses the “general welfare” clause in Article 1 Section 8 of our Constitution as a qualifier for the exorbitant spending sprees annually engaged. This continued act is a gross misappropriation of funds and must be held accountable. There is no constitutional basis for the United States sending monies to any foreign nation apart from settling debts. There are 17 additional clauses to Article 1 Section 8 that James Madison said, “With respect to the two words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” (1)

Many arguments were made during our nation’s infancy for and against using the federal treasury’s monies non-enumerated causes. (2) The majority of the views were against such wasteful spending. Although a broad interpretation could suggest liberal spending policies, the prescient writings suggest that the “general welfare” is a limitation for congress to spend its monies only on that which affects the nation nationally, forbidding local and international trysts.

Madison also argued in February 1792 that if money can be applied indefinitely by the congress under the guise of “general welfare,” it would be unlimited in its application thereof. (3) Naturally, spending would continue unabated. We witness the fruit of such a broad interpretation of the “general welfare” clause in our national debt. As of this writing, it is approximately $27.8 trillion. (4) (Michigan, is a much more palpable $74,226,884,435 in debt! (5))

$27,840,133,487,921! (I’ll take .0000001% of that in cash.)

What are we to do about that?

Even Alexander Hamilton, a large proponent of public spending, wrote in The Federalist No. 1 (6) that philanthropy is the tool we should use to rescue mankind’s general misfortune.

Total charitable giving in these United States topped $410 billion in 2017 (2.1% of GDP). What if, by Providential intervention, we could increase that to 10% of GDP? How could those monies be used to alleviate the tax burden and handcuff our legislature’s spending habits?

Settlers who landed at Plymouth in 1420 made the declaration in The Mayflower Compact “all they had suffered, and all they had risked was for ‘the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith.'” (7)

Christian charity is the source of all benevolence in this land. Acts 20:35 Paul exhorts us: “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'”

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

I believe these United States are the benevolent king for worldwide philanthropy. State and federal governments usurped the private citizens’ duty toward the same. We, therefore, have pusillanimously acquiesced, thinking we are too small or inconsequential to do something about it. Philanthropy belongs to the people, asceticism is the government’s role.

We can do something about reckless spending. We must do something about it! We start at the local level. Austerity! We look to alternatives to the way things have been, sacrifice for our children’s children. I am doing that in my hometown. If we all start small, the change we are hoping for will ripple through our states and the nation, freeing us from those spendthrift politician’s cronyism and foreign entanglements Washington warned (8).