Federal Budgeting or Lack Thereof

There is a looming crisis in federal spending that has been conveniently ignored by the mainstream media. Federal retirement benefits have soared for civil servants and military personnel, but the government has not put a single dollar in reserve to pay for the benefits! This is another example of the irresponsible way Congress spends our tax dollars.

By law, private retirement plans are required to be pre-funded. Private pension plans hold over $2.3 trillion in stocks, bonds and other assets, and even state and local governments hold over $3 trillion in reserves to pay retirement benefits as they should. Meanwhile the Federal government does not hold itself to the same standard, kicking the metaphorical can down the road by offering retirement benefits without creating a retirement account to pay the bills. 

Last year the federal government paid a record $268 billion in retirement benefits out of general fund revenues. All total, the unfunded liability for federal and military retirement benefits stands at $5.7 trillion, which is dangerously close to the unfunded mandate of social security which has an expected shortfall of $6.5 trillion.
By abdicating their responsibility to assure the long term health of our economy, Congress chooses to kick the can down the road a little further each year, leaving us at a point where there is no more road to kick down.

The problem is not the government employees who were promised a retirement plan when they were hired. For many, retirement benefits were the deciding factor between a private sector career and choosing the security of a government pension program. My issue is with elected leaders who use money that should fund retirement benefits for government workers on pet projects and pork-barrel spending instead.

It is not a matter of stripping promised retirement benefits from retired federal workers, just as we have no desire to take away Social Security benefits from those who depend on them. The answer lies in significant reduction of the federal government by returning to Constitutional limits on federal power.

Power must be returned to the states, ending the Big Brother mentality pervasive in Washington DC. We don’t need a Washington bureaucrat deciding what's best for our communities, and it's clear we also cannot afford it.