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Editor:
Angry yet?
Townhall
Finance...
Paying
for Government Now Takes a
Record 224 Days
By Bob Beauprez
8/16/11
Americans
for Tax Reform publishes s a
“Cost of Government Day” report every year, which calculates how long
the
average American must work to pay for the full costs of government
spending and
regulation. The 2011 version just came out and it isn’t encouraging. Here’s the bad news:
The
2011 Cost of Government Day fell
on August 12 – last Friday – meaning Americans labored a full 224 days
into the
year to pay for local, state and federal government spending and
regulations.
Americans
have lost 29 days of the of
the calendar year thanks to Obama’s overspending and regulatory zeal –
this is
the third straight year Cost of Government Day has fallen in August. July 21 was the previous
latest day ever.
Federal
Spending takes 103 days to pay
for, state and local government adds another 44 days, and total federal
regulations – the explosive impact of which is just beginning to be
felt from
the current administration’s agenda – adds another 77 days.
Of
special interest going forward is
the cost of the regulation agenda pursued by Obama.
“The
report also details the impact on
COGD of many factors in the growing cost of government,” says ATR.
“Case
studies in the report discuss: The
Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul which will severely increase
the
number of days Americans must work to pay off the regulatory burden;
Obamacare,
which will fail to rein in health care costs and continue to increase
federal
spending; The EPA, which has pursued an aggressive regulatory agenda
that will
further stall economic recovery.”
As
Townhall Finance’s editor John
Ransom reports in an upcoming issue of Townhall Magazine in a piece
titled
President Red Tape:
“Because
[Obama’s regulatory scheme]
prevents the creation of more jobs, however, it hits the poor and
middle class
particularly hard, ‘while the updated cost per employee for firms with
fewer
than 20 employees is now $10,585 (a 36 percent difference between the
costs
incurred by small firms when compared with their larger counterparts),’
says
the SBA. In other
words, small employers
take it on the chin even harder than the big guys. While Obama’s
rhetoric
panders to the little guys, his actions seemed geared to favor the big
guys
instead. Maybe that’s what the president meant when he said his
administration
was only into doing ‘big’ things.”
Read
it with the full ATR report at
Townhall Finance
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