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Heritage
Network
Top
Five Must See charts of 2013
As
part of our countdown to the new year, here are Heritage’s top five
must-see charts of 2013.
5.
What If a Typical Family Spent Money Like the Federal Government?
While
middle-class families are still plagued by a sluggish recovery in the
Obama economy, this is what their finances would look like if they
spent money like the government—and it’s not a pretty picture.
Most families understand that it is unwise to constantly spend
excessive amounts compared to what they take in, but the government
continues its shopping spree on the taxpayer credit card with
seemingly no regard to the stack of bills that has already piled up.
4.
Obamacare’s Barrage of Tax Hikes
Remember
President Obama’s promise that he would not raise taxes on the
middle class? Much like his pledge that Americans could keep their
health insurance, this turned out to be another promise Obamacare was
bound to break. As this chart shows, tax hikes included in Obamacare
are huge and pervasive, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars
in new revenues. Since this chart was published, new numbers for
Obamacare’s taxes have become available, and a study by Heritage’s
Alyene Senger shows that Obamacare will impose even more in
taxes—amounting to a whopping $771 billion in new revenue through
2022.
3.
Sequestration Cuts Only 2.5 Percent of Spending
As it
turns out, sequestration isn’t much of a “meat cleaver” after
all. While the sequester is an imperfect mechanism to reduce
spending, as the brunt of the cuts falls disproportionally on
defense, it only amounts to a 2.5 percent reduction in spending over
10 years. This hardly lives up to the President’s warnings that the
cuts would be “harmful” to the economy and would decimate
government services. As you can see, the U.S. has a long way to go to
rein in its growing spending.
2.
Where Did Your Tax Dollar Go?
Wonder
what happens to your hard-earned cash after you hand it over the IRS
each year? Almost half goes toward paying for the ballooning
entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—a
proportion that will only increase as the number of retirees expands
in the near future. Even worse, your tax money only funded 70 cents
of every federal dollar spent in 2012, meaning the remaining 30 cents
was borrowed and tacked on to the massive national debt.
1.
Each American’s Share of Publicly Held Debt
As
Washington lawmakers continue to spend more and pile on debt, each
American’s share of public debt has risen to $36,000—about six
times more than in 1970—and is set to rise astronomically in coming
years. Without reform, the government will have borrowed $135,547 in
public debt for each American, or almost three times the current
median income, by 2036. This chart shows that serious consequences
lie ahead if the government continues on its current path of reckless
spending with no reform in sight.
See
the charts at Heritage Network
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