That’s YOUR Money the White House Is Spending!

By Phillip Patrick, for Birch Gold Group

During the recent webinar with Dr. Ron Paul, we discussed the upcoming presidential election and how it’s likely to affect our personal finances.

I’ve been watching the federal government wrestle with its spending problem closely for the last few years. Lately it’s been giving me heartburn.

I’m tired of watching the same thing happen over and over. It goes like this:

1. The White House proposes a budget that spends more on everything – President Biden’s administration is single-handedly responsible for the second, third AND fourth largest one-year budget deficits in U.S. history
2. Congress argues about it…
3. …and eventually passes it with few, if any, changes.

It just happened again.

It took President Obama’s administration eight years to add $6.781 trillion to our nation’s debt. The Biden administration has almost matched that number, adding $6 trillion in just three years! Based on the White House’s $7.3 trillion 2025 budget proposal (which certainly won’t pass in its current form), Biden intends to shatter Obama’s 8-year debt record by adding another $1.8 trillion to the national debt.

The Biden years would go down in history as the biggest-spending, least fiscally responsible administration in U.S. history, racking up $7.8 trillion in debt. In just four years!

It’s easy to get distracted when we talk about government spending – the numbers are just so incredibly big. There’s no rational scale for a trillion dollars! There’s no way to imagine how much money that is.

Who’s the wealthiest person on earth at the moment? Depending on the day, it could be Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault (of LVMH fame) or Mark Zuckerburg. If you add up the total net worth of all TEN of the world’s wealthiest people, the total is less than just one year of Biden’s budget deficits!

data via Forbes

Stop and think about that for a moment.

Let’s take 2023 for example with its $6.13 trillion budget and $1.7 trillion deficit. In order to balance the books for that one year’s debt, the total net worth of the 10 richest people on earth isn’t enough!

People grumble about government spending, yes.

But they aren’t outraged. They aren’t taking to the streets in protest.

Most of our Congressional leaders are grumbling, sure – they aren’t drawing a line in the sand. They aren’t stopping this insanity. They spend more time arguing about what to spend on rather than cutting back.

Now, imagine for a moment that Congress decided to balance the budget for 2024 without cutting spending. Here’s what they’d need to do:

• Impose a 100% tax on everyone earning $100,000+ yearly ($1.02 trillion)
• 100% confiscation of the total net worth of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett ($686 billion)

Now, just imagine the public’s response to such a plan!

Yes, certainly there would be a few radicals thrilled by the idea of seizing and redistributing the income of every doctor, every dentist, every airline pilot and CEO in the U.S.

I believe, though, most Americans regardless of their politics would look upon this as a gross abuse of government authority. As they should! If the government can seize Warren Buffett’s and Elon Musk’s fortunes, what keeps our wealth safe?

Even if you think Mark Zuckerberg is a privacy-destroying schmuck, you still wouldn’t want to see his wealth zeroed out.

Now, all this is completely speculative and obviously couldn’t happen here and now.

But that’s what makes what I learned from Dr. Ron Paul so deeply upsetting…

Dollar devaluation is theft

The truth is, the federal government is already confiscating wealth! 

From Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, from Warren Buffett and from you.

The only difference is they aren’t taking it all at once – they’re taking it a sliver at a time, from everyone.

Here’s a quote from an article Dr. Paul wrote for us back in 2022:

That’s because, every time the government prints new money, it doesn’t make wealth. Only hard work creates wealth! Every single new dollar that rolls off the printing press reduces the value of every other dollar in the world.

Most people don’t understand this.

They think the number of dollars they have is more important than what those dollars can buy.

To continue:

The truth is, most people watch their balance much more closely than they watch the value of their money. If the balance goes down, it’s easy to see! If the value of your dollars, if your purchasing power decreases, you’re unlikely to notice right away.

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Inflation is how government spending robs us without changing the numbers in our bank accounts.

So those massive increases in the U.S. national debt? The $6 trillion we’ve seen in the last three years?

Who’s paying for it?

We ALL are.

Note the difference between debt per citizen and per taxpayer… Graphic via DebtClock

We won’t get a bill in the mail for our share of the government debt. For a lot of people that may come as a relief, considering the state of their finances. In fact, according to Laura Wasileski, “50% of American households do not have $1,000 in savings” to cover an emergency.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re paying for it! 

Since January 2021, the dollar has lost 16% of its purchasing power. That is how we’re paying for it.

If President Biden told us in his inaugural address something like this:

We can put people to work in good jobs. We can teach our children in safe schools. We can overcome this deadly virus. We can reward work, rebuild the middle class, and make health care secure for all. But it isn’t going to be free – in fact, it’s going to cost us all $1 out of every $6 dollars we have. Not instead of taxes, but in addition to the taxes we already pay.

…well, at least that would’ve been honest!

But that would’ve given us the opportunity to say, “Wait a minute, it’s going to cost how much?” 

We could’ve discussed fiscal priorities in an open and transparent way. At least we would’ve gone into the next three years with our eyes open.

A nation at a crossroads

As I see it, the U.S. is at a crossroads. We all know these massive budget deficits cannot continue indefinitely.

Your spending can exceed your income by 38% (based on 2023’s revenue and spending) for a while. But not forever. Eventually, your creditors simply refuse to refinance your debt and politely ask for their money back.

Here’s how I put it in the webinar with Dr. Paul.

We can reimagine the role government has in our lives. We can understand that Uncle Sam isn’t Santa Claus toting around a giant sack of free money to everyone with a hand out. Instead, we can make government significantly smaller. That means less bureaucracy and less waste – but it also means fewer services (student loans, grants for small businesses, even Medicare). At the same time, taxes will go up. That’s inevitable. As a nation, we could tighten our belts and live within our means.

Or the spending will continue. The government could continue pretending that the world will always want more dollars and would be delighted to continue financing the nation’s lack of fiscal discipline. The spending continues, until the dollar’s worth less than the paper it’s printed on. (At which point the government would step in and save the day by introducing some new form of money, most likely a digital dollar with surveillance and tracking technology built right in.)

This is not a new situation. Dozens of nations throughout history have faced the choice between fiscal responsibility and compulsive spending. Between austerity and bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, most nations follow the second option.

Tightening our belts and living within our means would be tough! Don’t misunderstand – it’s going to be a real challenge to pay off the $34.6 trillion in debt. Historically, though, the nations who’ve chosen this course experience a new golden age. Under President Andrew Jackson, the U.S. paid off its national debt in 1835 – leading to nearly a century of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity.

Continuing down the path we’re on, pretending the bill will never come due? That will lead to three generations of poverty at best. Argentina, for instance, has been trapped in a cycle of economic destruction for over 60 years.

I’m hoping for the best, but I’m planning for the worst.

Now, the next time you hear about government spending $7.2 billion for “enhancing the U.S.-Pacific Islands Partnership,” or $3.5 million for balloons for a Detroit parade, please don’t shrug. Please don’t laugh.

Please get angry. Because even though you don’t get the bill, that’s your money.

With global instability increasing and election uncertainties on the horizon, protecting your retirement savings is more important than ever. And this is why you should consider diversifying into a physical gold IRA. Because they offer an easy and tax-deferred way to safeguard your savings using tangible assets. To learn more, click here to get your FREE info kit on Gold IRAs from Birch Gold Group.

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