Support the Balance Budget Amendment

From The National League of Taxpayers:

Are they our servants or our masters?

As I write you today, the federal and state governments continue to inflate government workers’ pay and benefits with your tax dollars.

And wherever bureaucrats can exploit taxpayers to enrich themselves, they’ll fight like tooth and nail to keep the gravy train going.

As a result, government employees are wealthier and enjoy far greater perks than their private-sector counterparts.

For example, following the October government shutdown, federal employees who the government itself deemed “non-essential” received $2 billion of back pay for the sixteen days they didn’t work.

But the politicians who get elected with the support of the teachers’ union and the various government employees' unions know where their support comes from.

So they keep paying them off with not only your money, but also your kids’ and grandkids’ money.

For example, a recent financial review determined that more than half of the country’s state-run pension plans are fiscally unsound because they promise far more than they’ve got the cash to cover.

As growth in these plans’ liabilities continues to overtake that of assets, another study reveals that public-sector obligations are bleeding cities dry, too.

61 major cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Seattle, and San Francisco, owe a combined total of over $126 billion to government workers’ retiree health costs, but have only saved enough money to fund 6% of that amount.

Only two of these cities, Los Angeles and Denver, have even managed to scrape past half their obligations -- and just barely.

And yet, the public-sector unions are always looking for more.

Aren’t public servants supposed to serve the people rather than the other way around?

Today we should be reducing crushing taxes, cutting meddlesome regulations, and demanding economic sanity from our government.

But instead, our public servants now see themselves as our public masters, constantly rolling out new regulations and burdensome red tape on their counterparts in the private sector.

It’s time to cut the gravy train and the demands at both the state and national level.

That’s why National League of Taxpayers members fight against taxes at the state level, and at the federal level support H.J. Res. 5 and S.J. Res. 7, a bullet-proof national Balanced Budget Amendment.

This NLT-supported Balanced Budget Amendment would require a balanced budget every year, limit the size of the federal budget to 18% of our gross domestic product (GDP), and require a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress to raise taxes.

Tax-and-spend politicians can’t be trusted to voluntarily make real spending cuts, but this amendment would finally force all the national waste, including federal workers’ gravy train, onto the chopping block.

The taxpayers would finally cast off their federal public masters.

Sincerely,

Gary Paumen, President
National League of Taxpayers

P.S. Please click here to sign your Balanced Budget Amendment petitions to your Congressman and two Senators at once.

And if you are able, please consider chipping in with a donation of $10 or more to keep our vital programs running. We receive no government funding.