July 15: Cost of Government Day
by Grover Norquist, ATR
Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and its Cost of Government Center recently released the annual Cost of Government Day Report. The Cost of Government Day Report calculates the number of days the average American must work to pay for the full costs of government spending and regulation at all levels of government. This year, Americans had to work until July 15 to pay for the burden of government.
Fortunately, this year’s Cost of Government Day was three days earlier than last year’s. This is due, in part, to the efforts by conservative leaders to rein in federal spending. These battles over Washington’s addiction to overspending this past year have been hard fought, and resulted in some significant victories for taxpayers. Federal spending was held flat from the last fiscal year. Last August’s debt limit debate kept lawmakers focused on the true cause of the problems of Washington’s growth: overspending. The battle for limited government is far from over, as taxpayers spent 88 days working to pay for federal spending and 40 days to pay for state and local spending.
Regulatory costs threaten to push Cost of Government Day later into the year as well. Americans worked 69 to pay for the costs of regulations in 2012. The report discusses how the Obama Administration has been particularly aggressive when it comes to regulating energy resources thanks to the job-killing Environmental Protection Agency, promoting an agenda that threatens American jobs and portends a later COGD for years to come.
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