It’s tax time once again.
I’ve put off computing our federal and state income taxes until early April, but my time has run out. Other than the complex forms and incredibly complex instructions, I don’t mind the hours spent with my pencil and calculator.
What really bothers me is the way our government spends the money we submit.
Former congressman Dick Armey asked what do children, thieves and politicians have in common. The answer is that each spends other people’s money.
Does anyone believe that government employees exercise the same care with our money that we exercise with ours? If you believe they do, let me provide some examples where the government wastes our money.
Yes, we’re all familiar with $600 dollar hammers, luxurious conventions in Las Vegas, etc. I could discuss the merits of the F35 military jet, which will cost billions, but I’m not competent to discuss whether those fighter jets are worth the money.
I have first-hand, but less dramatic examples, when I served in the Pentagon.
The first examples were AIDS conventions in San Francisco and Montreal.
A nice civilian woman in the Army’s intelligence staff, where I worked at the time, was almost at the end of her career in the Pentagon. She asked to go to each convention and the U.S. Army paid, even though the service received no benefit from her attendance.
She didn’t even submit a report because nobody would read it. She spent a week in San Francisco and a week the following year in Montreal because she wanted to go, and her supervisors wouldn’t say no.
It wasn’t their money. Why should they care?
Second, each year in the Pentagon and at every military installation throughout the world, officials kept “end of year money” lists. Much of the military budget consists of “year-end money” or money that must be spent in that fiscal year or turned back to the treasury.
Organizations compete for “end of year money” each September, so that none is ever turned back to the treasury.
What kind of items are on “end of year money” lists?
Usually those lists are comprised by nice-to-have or even frivolous things like televisions, new furniture, or even practical things that will help but the organization could do without.
The theory is that if unspent funds exist at the end of the fiscal year, there would be no chance to increase the budget the following year.
My examples are puny, but multiply the money saved a thousand fold.
The domestic portion of our spending budget is infinitely harder for me to discuss because I receive a military pension and my wife and I receive social security. However difficult that is for me to discuss, that’s where the big problem lies.
It is also the acid test of a democracy. Do we have the self-discipline to reduce our personal largess from our democratically-elected government?
I’m no saint, so I’ll let the political process make the needed, hard decisions. I also feel like I earned my military pension and social security so I won’t voluntarily return either to the government.
So, before April 18, my wife and I will insert checks in envelopes and entrust them to the U.S. Post Office. Then we will sit back and watch our elected officials spread around our tax money to get themselves reelected.
It’s a happy situation for our elected officials that will last until our public debt becomes so great that it sinks our government.
Is a 20 trillion dollar public debt too big? How much more can we borrow before lenders stop lending?
Think about that for a moment. Unless we get our spending under control, we may soon experience a catastrophic loss of confidence in our money, rampant inflation, shortages, strikes, riots, massive unemployment and a severe depression.
The longer we spend freely, the more severe will be the eventual remedy.
Please pay attention to where your money is spent. Is it being spent wisely?

Michael Waldron is a retired lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army, who was born and raised in Niles. He previously served on the Niles Community School Board of Education. He can be reached at ml.waldron@sbcglobal.net.