Our Threatened Freedom

Who Gets Hurt by Budget Cuts

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 147-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 147

Dictation Name: Vol. L - Part 04 - Who Gets Hurt by Budget Cuts

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Who gets hurt by the budget cuts? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

As I travel back and forth across the United States, I find one dependable note in the television news whenever a state or federal budget is up for consideration. We are told that the budget cuts will hurt the poor and the aged, and we are shown some people who are going to suffer if the budget is cut. Now these stories may be true, but the statistics tell us the budgets are increasing, and the cuts are usually in the amounts of the proposed increases. This is not all. We are not told why some of our overgrown bureaucracies are not cut. Nor why our legislators do not cut their own expenditures. The next time we have budget talks, I would like to see interviews with the kind of people I know and recognize. One man tells me, I’m out of work; they are raising my property tax. Another says, I have had only a few days of work in three months, but the Internal Revenue Service is claiming I owe them 400 dollars from a year ago, and they may seize my pickup truck. One woman in her 80’s is upset because the IRS claims that she owes them 100 dollars. The real news out there is that millions are finding taxation oppressive and confiscatory. The major burden for many is big government.

A few years ago, when proposition 13 was on the California ballot, the argument against it was that police and fire protection would be cut if the measure passed. None of this proved to be true. The same argument was used in other states, nothing was said about cutting down on our bureaucracies. I submit that we are getting the same ploy with respect to budget cuts. The poor and the handicapped are told that they will get the axe, but the legislators do not axe the useless and overstaffed agencies. The idea seems to be to lay a guilt trip on everyone who wants lower taxes to make them feel like hardhearted Simon {?}. Is it too much to expect honesty about budgets?

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.