A father makes some startling discoveries about the Obama budget.

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Things are not looking pretty. I went to the grocery store yesterday to shop for my daughter who had just delivered her baby. I was laying in enough "easily cooked" foods so that she could concentrate on the important things (the baby!) and so that her husband could enjoy his new family without having to be Mr. Mom to the tenth degree. She lives in a larger city, where everything is priced higher than in the small, little town in which I live.

I was flabbergasted!

I'm not talking a grocery cart full of food. I had maybe 8 bags of groceries at the most.

And I spent nearly $200.

It wasn't cheap to travel the two-and-a-half-hour trip up there either. Gas is once again over $3.00 a gallon (somehow this just HAS to be George Bush's fault!) and while I don't have a gas guzzler, it's not one of those fancy hybrids or a newer model vehicle that gets 40+ miles to the gallon. I really don't care if the rising prices are because of the Middle East turmoil right now, because OPEC is a greedy little cartel, or if it's a government conspiracy to counteract "global warming" - I just know that it's costing me more to fill up my car and my paycheck isn't keeping up with the cost-of-living increases.

I'm semi-retired. I don't have children to feed. My house isn't paid for, but it's modest and I can afford the monthly note. The taxes are a bit outrageous, but I'm keeping up with them. My car is an older model car and the insurance isn't too bad on it. Tags are much cheaper.

It's the younger generation, those like my daughter with new babies, that I feel for. I bought her a container of powdered formula for the baby. It was the larger, economy-sized container and it cost $25.

It'll last for 6 days. The box of diapers for $25 will last her a whopping 10 days, if she's lucky. She and her husband are going to have to figure out a way to either reduce costs or bring in more money.

If Only Our Government Could Learn This Lesson

Sitting here looking over the current administration's federal budget proposal for 2011 and interested in seeing what his 2012 proposal is, I have to wonder if any of these yahoos ever took a financial management class. While families all across America are tightening their belts (either voluntarily or involuntarily), our government has yet to act like anything except an over-indulged teenager with an unlimited line of credit on his parents' credit card and a new set of wheels.

And you really have to watch for the government double-speak when it comes to the budget. For instance, when they talk about spending "cuts" what they really mean is "we're not going to ask for as much of an increase as we would have liked." So, for example, if the administration really wants $15 billion for a particular agency that got $10 billion last year and only receives $12.5 billion in a negotiated budget, they'll declare to the American people that they slashed that agency's budget by 50%, even though it actually increased by 25% over the last year's budget.

And you wonder why our country is in the fiscal shape it's in!

I recently printed out the administration's 2011 budget proposal (and really wonder why I wasted the paper). However, one thing did jump out at me - the fees for services that we're already paying taxes for.

In the president's proposed budget for 2011 (which has yet to be negotiated or acted upon because the previous Congress refused to perform its contractual duties to the American people), I noticed some new fees that it includes for agricultural inspections. These inspections are for animals and plants, and include food safety inspection, granaries, stockyards, packers, etc.

We're already taxed to pay for the agencies that are in charge of our food safety. We paid $25 billion dollars in taxes just for our Department of Agriculture. That money is supposed to pay for whatever programs the department implements, and any inspection services needed. Now they want to impose fees for food safety inspections and if you think this is not going to be passed on to the consumer in additional costs, you're not facing reality.

Not only are food prices on the rise, now they're going to be even higher when the fees associated with food inspections are passed on to consumers. We're talking the budget estimate of $90 million dollars in fees, but no government agency has ever lived within its budget estimates, and I think we can expect them to be much higher, especially if it's something that can be considered a "back door" tax that isn't apparent except in the cost of the commodity for the consumer.

 

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