John Block Reports from Washington

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you. And now for today’s commentary— President Obama is telling us that the Tax Code needs to be changed and simplified. Hard to disagree with that. However, I don’t think any of the politicians are really serious about fixing the Tax Code and dealing with our explosion in debt. We are projected to add over the next 10 years a staggering 9.3 trillion dollars to the national debt. Socking the rich with even more taxes will not work. The top 1 percent of taxpayers already pays 29 percent of the federal tax bill. The lowest 50 percent of income earners pay almost no federal income tax at all. In fact, 60 percent of the lowest earners pay very little federal income tax. That leaves 40 percent of the taxpayers that pay for everything. That includes the military, the nutrition programs, inspection services, education, energy – on and on. Do you think for a minute that the 60 percent of people, that pay very little taxes, getting all of that service for free are going to say, “no, let’s not spend so much.” Of course not! It’s free to them. Now, you can see why the Congress and most o the politicians can’t put the brakes on spending. By giving goodies away, they buy votes. We can’t reform Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid. They call Social Security reform the “third rail of politics.” Touch it and politically you are dead. We need to be honest. Our deficit cannot be closed by taxes alone. Here is the bottom line. We cannot keep taking people off the tax rolls. The majority of our voters need to have some “skin in the game.” Otherwise, there is no incentive to control spending. We are out of control – spend, spend, spend – education, healthcare, environment. There is no discipline, and the Tax Code only encourages reckless spending. Until next week, I am John Block from Washington, DC.