There are likely hundreds of illustrations used to help people wrap their minds around the mind-numbing numbers reflected in the size of the federal government, its colossal budgets and its staggering debts. You know the ones- stack enough dollar bills to finance the budget and it will reach the moon. That kind of thing. As helpful as these are, I’m afraid they’re not personal enough.
So let’s try this. Let’s assume, to make the math easier for me, that you earn an average of $100,000 a year. That you work fifty years and that you net out a 20% annual income tax bill. Over your lifetime in this scenario you will pay $1,000,000 in income tax. Horrifying isn’t it? Just you, all by yourself, giving a million dollars to the federal government.
But wait. There’s more. It’s all well and good to imagine what you’d do, with your own money. But the feds have been taking it all along. Imagine still more if those taxes you paid were invested wisely and safely. (Keep in mind income taxes are just a portion of your taxes. Not included are FICA or state or local or excise or gas or any other taxes.)
But wait. There’s less. That million dollars you paid in income tax, for the whole of your life, paid for what exactly? We recently learned FEMA spent $59 million, in one day, on hotels in New York City for illegal immigrants. That means that you and 58 of your closest friends have worked your whole lives for that one check on that one day. Or, you would have to work 58 more lifetimes, just to cover that check, just to pay that one hotel bill.
Or maybe you want your lifetime of taxes to pay for something more American. Those taxes that sting so deeply, for your whole life, would pay for 1/882,000 of this year’s interest bill on the national debt. You and 881,999 of your closest friends will work your entire lives to pay the taxes to cover this year’s interest on the national debt. Or you would have to live 882,000 lifetimes just to pay this year’s interest on the national debt.
You would need another 175,000 friends working their entire lives to raise the taxes to pay the Ukraine “bill” just for 2024. You’d need 19 friends to work their entire lives to pay the taxes to pay for the US government’s creation of Sesame Street for Arabs. What I haven’t listed is the cost of any legitimate, biblical and/or Constitutional expenses of the federal government, far less that accumulated debt.
Do not, in these giddy early days of DOGE, lose sight of the ball. The goal is not to stop the plundering that creates multimillionaires of wage earning oligarchs like Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren. The goal is not for the government to be more efficient at the things it does that it shouldn’t be doing. The goal is not for the government to find better things to spend this money on. The goal for us is to be free, to whip Leviathan back into its cage. As the wise Milton Friedman said, “It’s always the spending.”
We have been led, by both parties, beyond freedom and dignity. This crisis is trillions of times more serious than we think. It is compelling proof of the madness of the heirs of King George. We are broker than broke, more broken than broken. May the Lord hear our cries.
The corruption of our government is a symptom of a much deeper problem, sin. Until we, as a people, recognize the depth of our sin, we will continue to spend ourselves into oblivion. We haven’t learned a thing from history, particularly when it comes to God’s Holy Word. There is nothing special about America in the eyes of our Father in Heaven. We are no different than Babylon, the Roman Empire or any other manmade authority on this earth. The only answer for each one of us is to seek the Kingdom of God first and foremost, otherwise we are paddling up the creek without a paddle.
Amen