If any of you have taken Dave Ramsey’s financial classes, you know he uses an “envelope system” to help you budget and save money. You can easily see where money is being spent, how it’s growing or dwindling, and so on.

The government can’t make envelopes that big, so we talk in terms of buckets. Based on the way it spends money, it’s obvious it doesn’t t just think we have buckets-full; we must have skip loaders-full.

We all know about the basic buckets…

Military, health and welfare, education and a few others. For those of you who really don’t get it, the government does not make “revenue,” it collects taxes. Or in plain, simple English, it takes your money.

I don’t have a real problem paying taxes. I don’t want to do it, but I do understand the need to pay taxes for the basics like first responders (fire, police, ambulance), military, “basic” healthcare (hospitals and clinics), road work and maintenance (in the form of tire or gas taxes), snow removal, landslide removal – you get the picture. Paying basic taxes for services received.

But I don’t want to fund the government’s stupidity and inability to spend money wisely.

Enter the Progressive Left. Who made the noise when we were paying $90 for a toilet seat and $300 for hammers? (Republicans.) When we paid that EPA employee who never showed up for work for eight years? (Republicans.) And what about the millions of dollars in new buildings for government workers when we have numerous empty ones that we aren’t even renting out? (Republicans.) When can I scream for you simply to stop wasting money?

I keep hearing from the left how the “rich” can afford to pay more, when in reality they are already paying more of their income, percentage-wise, than the 99-percenters. Why? They made better decisions, took greater risk and therefore made more money. Guess what? A majority of those “rich people” are Democrats.

Democrats keep saying rich people should pay more taxes, but where is their money? The Dems have some of the richest congressmen on the Hill (they don’t all arrive rich, but most leave rich). They keep talking about closing tax loopholes, but what bill has Pelosi, Reid or Feinstein put on the table that will close the loopholes that they themselves take advantage of? None.

President Obama is going to come out on Tuesday telling us all the good things he has done and how everything is going to be butterflies and rainbows. Unemployment is at 5.6 percent; however, we have 1 million fewer full-time workers today than when he took office. We have less worker participation than when he took office. There’s not enough money in the unemployment and disability buckets (now being funded by these new part-time taxpayers). They’ll say the government is paying the shortage, but we are the government, so taxpayers are funding it.

He is going to tell us how families can now afford health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act, and for the first time in history many families have insurance that couldn’t get it before. Another program carried on the backs of the taxpayer through the HHS tax bucket. Many of these policies are subsidized by the government – sorry, I mean taxpayers. All those new, part-time taxpayers.

Many families lost their health insurance and had to go to a substandard health policy with longer wait periods and longer drives for people to see their doctors and get help. Additionally, they now have larger deductibles. And let’s just get past all of that “You can keep your doctor” BS and discuss how he said it would “cost you less than the average cell phone bill” but then switched to “you will need to tighten your budget and cut out some things you don’t have to have.”

Instead of saving the average family $2,500 a year, it will end up costing the average family about $5,000 a year. That’s the projection from the Congressional Budget Office, not The Real Side.

He’s also going to tell us families will have a chance to save money and get ahead and realize the American dream and own a home. In reality, home ownership is down from when he took office by 3 percent, median income is down, many people are working part-time instead of full-time jobs, the poverty level has increased, and people on food stamps have almost doubled. These government-subsidized programs are paid from the welfare bucket. Apparently in the president’s world, having less somehow translates into a better chance of realizing the American dream.

He’ll say “The market is doing great.” How about we pull the $85 billion a month the government is using in the prop-up-the-market bucket (more taxpayer money going down the drain), and see what the market really looks like?

He’ll say gas is at an all-time low (as if he deliberately had a hand in making it happen). I doubt he’ll issue a big shout-out and “thank you” to ISIS. If you want to thank Obama for this, I suppose you can. His inactivity in squelching the JV team known as ISIS has allowed them to steal millions of gallons of oil, ship it in stolen tankers, and sell the oil at prices that make the Saudi Arabians look bad. The Saudis then dropped prices to match so that they could stay in the game and drive the price of a barrel of gas so low that the American oil companies couldn’t afford to produce and would therefore shut down local refineries.

Congratulations, even more people on unemployment. The welfare and unemployment buckets are going to need more taxpayer money.

Several economists have said even if we took 90 percent of the money from the country’s richest people and richest corporations, it wouldn’t make a double-digit dent in America’s woes. All it would do is make the lower 99 percent feel better because you dinged the rich guys.

How many of you get most or all of your income tax money back? We have more people than ever on food stamps, welfare and assisted medical, and we’re getting ready to wipe out school loans and give free college educations. And don’t get me started on illegal immigrant benefits. No money in, lots of money out. It’s sheer lunacy.

We can’t keep it up. The buckets are empty and no one cares. There is a bottom to the bucket and when we finally find it, America will be in a world of hurt.

Joe Messina is host of The Real Side (TheRealSide.com), a nationally syndicated talk show that runs on AM-1220 KHTS radio and SCVTV [here]. He is also an elected member of the Hart School Board. His commentary publishes Mondays.

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