Grading the US Government :(

As we stated in our last post our biggest worry is our government wrecking the economy.  I won’t list them all here, but the number of changes to the tax code without any action by our lovely elected officials is staggering.  In our opinion, if they pull a stunt similar to last year’s debt ceiling debacle this time the ramifications could seriously affect the economy as the massive tax increases will stifle economic growth.

I wanted to see if the government has a revenue problem (collecting taxes), so I went to the Monthly Treasury statement to see what growth/decline in receipts by the US Treasury has occurred in the last ten years.  The 12 months ending March ’12 the US collected $2,002.8 billion in receipts compared to receipts of $1,664 billion for the twelve months ending March ’02.  That is an annualized growth in receipts of 1.87%, so obviously the government does not have a revenue problem.  In addition, during the 12 month period ending in March 2002 the United States ran a surplus!

Guess what that culprit must be then….. spending.  I love the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” and the chart below from the US Department of Treasury tells the story.  The difference between projected and actual cumulative budget surpluses/deficits from fiscal 2001-2011 is a staggering $11.9 Trillion dollars.