Government Spending: Waste, Fraud and Abuse

Cal Thomas | Syndicated Columnist | Updated: Dec 06, 2011

Government Spending: Waste, Fraud and Abuse

The unemployment rate has fallen from 9 percent to 8.6 percent with 120,000 jobs added to payrolls in November. That's not the real story. The numbers balance out when you factor in the people who have been unemployed for so long and stopped looking for work.

And now there's the debate in Congress about whether the cut in the payroll tax should be extended. Democrats are saying Republicans want to raise your taxes by ending it. What a joke from a party that always wants to raise taxes. Republicans want reforms to Social Security and Medicare and Democrats don't for political reasons.

What Republicans want is to offset these payroll tax cuts with cuts in other spending. But Democrats, who worship government, never want to cut anything, not even the rate of spending increases. That's the real issue, and Republicans should start focusing more on the spending and not the class warfare of who pays "enough" (according to liberals) in taxes. People understand waste, fraud and abuse.

I'm Cal Thomas in Washington.

Publication date: December 6, 2011

Government Spending: Waste, Fraud and Abuse