{"id":1440277,"date":"2022-04-15T12:30:29","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T16:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1440277"},"modified":"2022-04-15T12:30:31","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T16:30:31","slug":"watchdog-biden-budget-pushes-taxpayer-burden-to-919k-each","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/watchdog-biden-budget-pushes-taxpayer-burden-to-919k-each\/","title":{"rendered":"Watchdog: Biden Budget Pushes \u201cTaxpayer Burden\u201d to $919k Each"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwatchdog-biden-budget-pushes-taxpayer-burden-to-919k-each%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1440277&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>When President Joe Biden submitted his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/bidens-5-8-trillion-proposed-spending-plan-calls-on-congress-to-fill-in-the-blanks_4369849.html\">$5.8 trillion Fiscal Year 2023 budget request <\/a>to Congress in late March, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthinaccounting.org\">Truth In Accounting\u2019s<\/a> (TIA) 12th annual \u201cfinancial state of the union\u201d report was just three weeks old.<\/p>\n<p>But after reading Biden\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/budget_fy2023.pdf\">149-page proposed budget<\/a>, TIA founder and CEO Sheila Weinberg quickly realized her group\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthinaccounting.org\/library\/doclib\/Financial-State-of-the-Union-2022.pdf\">2022 Financial State of the Union`<\/a> report was already obsolete.<\/p>\n<p>In analyzing the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fiscal.treasury.gov\/reports-statements\/financial-report\/current-report.html\">Financial Report of the United States Government<\/a>\u00a0for FY22 published in February, TIA accountants and fiscal analysts calculated federal government debt to be $133 trillion, with every one of the nation\u2019s taxpayers each shouldering an $836,000 \u201ctaxpayer burden.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After Biden released his proposed budget, TIA\u2019s revised its federal government debt calculation upward to $141 trillion, with each of the nation\u2019s taxpayers now bearing a $919,000 \u201ctaxpayer burden.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In essence, Biden\u2019s budget request instantly imposed an $83,000 per capita federal tax increase on the nation\u2019s taxable citizens, according to TIA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFolks in Washington, D.C., seem to have given up totally on the concept of fiscal responsibility,\u201d Weinberg told The Epoch Times. \u201cFiscal responsibility is dead. The \u2018new normal\u2019 is $1 trillion deficits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But even that \u201cnew normal\u201d is the same old smoke-and-mirrors, she said, noting the $1 trillion \u201cdeficit\u201d as presented in the budgets is projected annual spending vs forecast revenues, not a transparent accounting of total public debt, including \u201cunfunded liabilities\u201d in public employee pensions and other debt obligations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe thing that people don\u2019t realize,\u201d she said, \u201cis that the total federal government debt is $141 trillion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Weinberg, a Certified Public Accountant with more than 40 years of experience in government finance, founded Chicago-based TIA in 2002.<\/p>\n<p>The group has carved a niche for itself among government and spending watchdogs by insisting all liabilities be included\u2014and counted\u2014when analyzing budgets, and then breaking down expenditures-versus-revenues to calculate \u201ctaxpayer burdens\u201d at the federal and state levels, and <span class=\"s1\">75 of the nation\u2019s largest municipalities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">TIA\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthinaccounting.org\/library\/doclib\/FSOS-Booklet-2021.pdf\"><span class=\"s2\">2021 Financial State of the States <\/span><\/a>analysis was published in September and it will post its annual \u201cTaxpayer Burden\u201d update in May, Weinberg said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>TIA\u2019s calculations have been frequently dismissed by government agencies and other forensics accounting experts as over-simplified.<\/p>\n<p>Among criticisms, especially regarding TIA\u2019s public employee pension and retiree benefit debt calculations, is it does not account for amortization periods incorporated into budgets.<\/p>\n<p>Texas, for instance, considers pension debt \u201chealthy\u201d if all it \u201cowes\u201d can be paid off through investment returns and contributions within a 31-year period. Georgia requires a 25-year amortization period.<\/p>\n<p>But Weinberg maintains this is an \u201caccounting trick\u201d that allows governments to accumulate debt by drafting budgets on a \u201ccash-basis\u201d and politicians to get elected based on undeserved fiscal acumen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason that the government doesn\u2019t include [all liabilities] in their debt numbers is they don\u2019t see, they don\u2019t count, anything beyond the checks that are written\u201d in that budget, she said, meaning \u201cthose numbers on the other side of the balance sheet\u201d are simply excluded in annual budgets.<\/p>\n<p>According to TIA\u2019s full-ledgered account of federal government finances at the end of FY22, which was Sept. 30, 2021, the United States\u2019 \u201cfinancial condition worsened by nearly $19 trillion\u201d with its unfunded liabilities\u2014or, \u201cwhat if all bills came due?\u201d\u2014topping $141 trillion.<\/p>\n<p>TIA cites two main sources of this uncounted debt: $58.1 trillion in Medicare and $45.4 trillion in Social Security \u201cpromises\u201d that \u201cthe government has not set any money aside to fund.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The $5 trillion in pandemic relief and recovery packages adopted by Congress in 2020 and 2021 also \u201chad a negative impact on the fiscal health of the federal government last year,\u201d TIA states.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust like all the state and local governments, the federal government took on extra costs and had to borrow more money to deal with the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In its analysis of federal FY22 expenditures, TIA documents that $7.4 trillion was spent on health and human services, defense and veterans affairs, Social Security, education, and other expenses, including interest on the debt.<\/p>\n<p>That $7.4 trillion spent is significantly more than the $4.3 trillion in revenues collected by the federal government over the year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe system now is unsustainable,\u201d but elected officials in Congress are allowing it to remain so because sooner or later, fiscal reality will force decisions by default, Weinberg said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now, you have promised to pay $141 trillion and you don\u2019t have a plan on how you will pay those benefits,\u201d she said, which means, by default, \u201cthe plan right now is to cut benefits.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey beat up people who propose fixing Social Security and Medicaid,\u201d Weinberg continued, \u201cbut the plan right now is to cut benefits because the system is unsustainable and they\u2019re not doing anything to fix it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact, they\u2019re doubling down.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"author_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"one_author_block round\">\n<div class=\"top_row\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/author-john-haughey\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>John Haughey has been a working journalist since 1978 with an extensive background in local government, state legislatures, and growth and development. A graduate of the University of Wyoming, he is a Navy veteran who fought fires at sea during three deployments aboard USS Constellation. He\u2019s been a reporter for daily newspapers in California, Washington, Wyoming, New York, and Florida; a staff writer for Manhattan-based business trade publications.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When President Joe Biden submitted his $5.8 trillion Fiscal Year 2023 budget request to Congress in late March, Truth In Accounting\u2019s (TIA) 12th annual \u201cfinancial state of the union\u201d report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1440277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1440277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1440277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1440277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1440277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}