It all starts with big government encroaching on every area of our lives. As government over-reaches, it grows. Big brother gets bigger. Big government simply becomes obese.
Former President Ronald Reagan once commented, “Man is not free unless government is limited…. As government expands, liberty contracts.” Just how true is this!
For example, today in the States we have a government that has attempted to swallow sections of the private sector in order to save it. Banks are bailed-out and GM becomes Government Motors. As President Obama acknowledged in his State of the Union address, the American economy remains strained and the vaunted stimulus package has added a mountain of debt to this and future generations.
Our Canadian government is no different. There was once upon a time (only a couple of years ago!) when Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised not to run a budget deficit, stating, “I know economists will say well, we could run a small deficit but the problem is that once you cross that line as we see in the United States, nothing stops deficits from getting larger and larger and spiralling out of control.”
Well, today Canadians are on a run-away train. Back on March 31, 2006, our federal government had a budget surplus of $13.6 billion. Now Canadians must deal with the biggest deficit in our history! On March 31, 2010 we will hear it is $55.9 billion – if not more! This all happened in the last four years, on the watch of a Conservative Government?!
It is a gross understatement to say that overspending has been the Harper government’s Achilles heel. Last year program spending was $207-billion. From the government’s own projections, this is expected to rise to $254-billion for the 2013-2014 fiscal year. That’s a 24% increase over five years!
Our Ontario provincial government is as bad with its spending habits and its bulging bureaucracy. The McGuinty Government is now spending $20 billion more a year than they did when it took office. There can be no arguing that the current $25-billion budget deficit is directly attributed to lousy fiscal management. And this government’s unbridled spending is bound to increase – just this month it announced a new, expanded all-day kindergarten at a cost of $1.5 billion per year.
Overreaching governments! Ballooning bureaucracies! Train-wrecks everywhere you look!
