Posted on 04/15/2024 7:27:52 PM PDT by jfd1776
April 15 is usually Tax Day in the United States – the day by which your individual federal tax return has to have been filed, if you’re to avoid a late penalty.
And if you’re in one of the many states with its own statewide income tax – 43 at last count – that usually shares the same deadline.
By what right does the government take this money from us?
That’s an easy one. The Constitution says it can. To be specific, the 16th Amendment authorized the federal government to collect income taxes, so it’s been legal for 110 years.
So it’s the Constitution that makes this tax legal. The politicians who support it will waste no time citing the Constitution of the United States, when it gives them permission to do something they want to do.
But this opens them up to a different problem, doesn’t it?
What do they spend all that money on? What justifies THAT?
Ask that question, and the politicians get awfully quiet. The problem is, that same Constitution which so clearly allows them to collect taxes the way they want, to pay for the necessary functions of the government, does not so clearly allow them to spend it the way they want.
The Constitution is clear in its authorizations, and some of them are quite sweeping indeed: The government can use tax revenues to fund the armed forces, to build highways, to run a post office, and foreign embassies. They can operate a federal judiciary, borrow money and pay it back with interest, secure our borders, and conduct trade agreements with foreign nations. They can punish piracy and other felonies, punish counterfeiters, and operate a bureau of weights and measures.
In fact, no matter how broadly you read the Constitution, the authorized tasks of the federal government are, at most, only about a third of our federal outlays. Even with the incredible cost of a modern military, and the unbelievable principal and interest our national debt has grown to, these authorized expenditures still make up only about a third of our annual federal budget.
And this leaves us with this question: Why aren’t our federal taxes a third as high as they are?
The federal government has lots of other ways to make money, by the way. Our income taxes aren’t the only source of revenue. They collect import duties and fees, antidumping and countervailing duties, and punitive tariffs like the Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs too. They collect Social Security and Medicare taxes (“off budget,” whatever that means), and capital gains taxes and mineral rights lease fees and permits. And business taxes too, oh, so many of those.
But still they “need” our personal income taxes. At these painful levels. What for, really?
Well, in addition to the projects that the federal government legally funds under the Constitution, they also grant countless billions of dollars in grants to schools and colleges and research foundations both here and abroad, ranging from the state college down the road to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Constitution doesn’t say they can do it; they do it anyway.
The federal government issues stimulus checks whenever the party in power thinks it needs to buy some votes, so that’s $300 or $600 or $1200 or more, designed to cover huge demographics of both working and nonworking adults of voting age. The Constitution makes no mention of authorizing bread and circuses for the general population, but they do it anyway.
The federal government picks industries to destroy, and that’s not cheap. In the 1970s, they started turning the public against petroleum, coal and even natural gas, so they have been funding such incredibly inefficient alternatives as solar and wind for decades. They issue countless billions of dollars in subsidies for the panels and windmills, their importation and installation, even their manufacture abroad – all with your tax dollars. This makes our electric grid inefficient, enriches China, and harms our own American businesses that develop traditional energy sources that work. The Constitution doesn’t authorize any of this, but they do it anyway.
The federal government decided to pay Americans to intentionally destroy their own working automobiles – overwhelmingly American cars and trucks – 15 years ago, in a program called Cash for Clunkers. These weren’t really clunkers, of course, but they were American cars, and the Obama-Biden administration wanted Americans to buy Asian economy cars, so they paid us – with our own money – to destroy our Chevrolets and Dodges and Fords and GMCs, and to spend the money on Hondas and Toyotas and Nissans and Hyundais. This was a drop in the bucket compared to the other issues on this list, only about $3 billion in taxpayer funds. But it is a fascinating example of the government paying Americans, with borrowed money, to destroy American cars and reward them for buying, often, the first foreign car of their lives. The Constitution didn’t allow them to do this, but they did it anyway.
On an infinitely larger scale, however, the federal government decided to kill the American auto industry outright, so it expanded the concept of CAFÉ standards and boosted their demands to an impossible level, using the fictional science of “climate change” to blame a harmless gas – carbon dioxide – and force the auto companies to make battery-operated “electric vehicles” instead of cars and trucks that work. Between the regulatory apparatus forcing this change, the subsidies funding EV purchases, and the cost of federally funded charging stations to support it all, we’re already well north of three or four hundred billion dollars, and that’s only for a couple percent of the nation’s auto fleet (new EVs made up 8.5% of auto purchases last year, truly a drop in the bucket). How many trillions of dollars would it take to complete the job? An impossible question, since our electric grid can’t even handle the number of EVs we have today. This federal assault on the American auto industry is killing the car companies. The federal government has no legal right to do any of this, of course; they did it anyway.
In the 1960s, President Lyndon Baines Johnson – “LBJ” to his friends, of whom he had none – championed a welfare program called The Great Society, designed to trap America’s poor, especially our racial minorities, in a permanent state of dependence on government checks. This unprecedented expansion of the welfare state has impoverished countless tens of millions of people, destroyed neighborhoods, families, human lives, and only grows in its destruction. This welfare state costs us, in sheer dollars alone, hundreds of billions of dollars per year, but it costs infinitely more in its human costs. The Constitution gives the federal government no authority to spend our tax dollars on such an evil project; the federal government does so anyway.
Most significant in the minds of most Americans today, as we watch the news on our TV or computer screens, or hear the reports on our radios, is the intentional abandonment of our borders by the current regime. The Biden-Harris team has directed federal forces to allow the nation to be overrun by hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens per month. These countless torrents have overwhelmed our border states and our big cities, bringing with them massive crime and disease, breaking the social safety nets of both public welfare programs and private charities. Our healthcare sector, our schools, our courts are all breaking under the strain. Both states and federal agencies are illegally funding hotel stays, paying medical invoices and restaurant bills, even chartering buses and airplanes as they shuttle these illegal aliens around the country. The Constitution allows no such actions; they do it anyway.
The above examples are just a drop in the bucket, a mere sampling with hundreds more such examples behind them, as we scour the federal budget and see what our tax dollars are spent on.
Did you vote for any of this?
A Constitution is, after all, a pact between the states and the people, agreeing to authorize a federal government to represent us, and to do just those few things that we – the individuals and the states – cannot do for ourselves.
Nothing we’ve listed here, and none of the remaining hundreds of government projects, departments, and bureaucracies unmentioned, has been legally authorized by the states and the people, for the federal government to take on at all.
The Founding Fathers had a plan to protect us from such mission creep in our federal government, of course. The Framers set up each branch to be a watchdog over the other, and they specifically listed the only functions that the federal government was allowed to manage. And the government stayed within those bounds, for the most part.
Until 1913.
With the passage of the 17th amendment, the Framers’ design was stood upside down. By changing the US Senate from the state legislators’ seat at the table into just another House of Representatives with longer terms, the Constitution was robbed of its most important tethers. The federal government was empowered to grow as it pleased, without state houses to rein it in. And over the past century, the size of our federal government has exploded.
If we ever hope to lower our tax rates, we must rein in the spending, and that also necessitates reining in the scope of our government. We never voted for any of this. We were never even asked to, because even the most leftist politicians know that the American people would not vote for such outrageous programs, much less to authorize the constitutional amendments that such authority would require.
On this tax day, 2024, we must focus on the nation’s need to reduce the size of our federal government – to return to Constitutional levels – and to build in a protection against such devastating program explosions ever returning again. And that likely means that we need to repeal the 17th Amendment. If this is to be a federation of states rather than dictatorship from Washington D.C., we must re-empower the states by again making the United States Senate a power brake wielded by the state capitols. It’s likely our only chance.
Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer, and actor. Once a County Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, after serving as president of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009.
Professionally, he is a licensed Customs broker, and has worked in freight forwarding and manufacturing for over forty years. John is available for very non-political training seminars ranging from the Incoterms to the workings of free trade agreements, as well as fiery speeches concerning the political issues covered in his columns. His book on vote fraud, “The Tales of Little Pavel,” and his three-volume political satires of the Biden-Harris regime, “Evening Soup with Basement Joe,” are available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
As early as the 1820s, the federal government was building canals. It was controversial then.
Some would maintain that the Louisiana Purchase was Unconstitutional, especially as Jefferson isn’t allowed to initiate purchases for such things.
A police power to protect those collecting whiskey taxes (revenooers) came in pretty early, too.
This is something that affects government at every level.
The issue I see is when people don’t like something, they want it made against the law. That has gone on for many years.
My personal point of view is if you don’t like something, don’t do it. Don’t try to prevent others from doing it.
That’s is much like what many of the Founders thought if you read the Federalist Papers and their counterpoints.
Basically preserve freedom and live and let live.
The problem is there are far too many people that want absolute power and control. Many think Trump is like that. But, if you look at his record, he has removed more regulations from the Federal government than most. Fewer regulations translates to more freedom.
Many of the regulations removed were federal government overreach and we’re returned to the purview of the states where they should be.
The Founders, by their actions and words, saw government as a necessary evil and wanted the least amount of government possible.
The Constitution is written to restrict government and only empower it in very specific areas. The Tenth Amendment makes that very clear yet is largely ignored.
Amendment X (1791)
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Globalists want a one world government with absolute control of everything in my opinion. One size fits all. But one size rarely fits all.
Trump has put a wrench into the gears of globalism. That’s why globalists be they Democrat, Republican, socialist, communist, or whatever hate him so much.
I am a strict constructionist. I am for strictly Constitutional government. 𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭; 𝐔.𝐒. 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐬; 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐈𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝.
Anyway, that’s, in general, my thoughts on government.
They won when they started having income tax withholding on worker’s pay checks. Prior to that, you had to pony up and pay the man but most workers had no tax burden. They made a Ponzi scheme where they would get paid first because they knew the average dolt wouldn’t have the money come April 15th. Now, they give all the good little comrades a refund of their excess withholding.
When one gets used to writing out “United States Treasury” one becomes acutely aware of what they are paying far more than when one never sees it.
we are funding the war against us
<>With the passage of the 17th amendment, the Framers’ design was stood upside down. By changing the US Senate from the state legislators’ seat at the table into just another House of Representatives with longer terms, the Constitution was robbed of its most important tethers. The federal government was empowered to grow as it pleased, without state houses to rein it in. And over the past century, the size of our federal government has exploded.<>
Together, the 16th and 17th Amendments blew up our Framers’ incredible design.
We live in a representative despotism on the verge of crushing authoritarianism.
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