Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – guest host John Harris welcomed original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
This one is one where I’m taking two or three topics that are all intermeshed. One of them, it has to do with just the huge rising cost of healthcare. Another is the impending deficit and the problems that we have with the deficit. Here are some interesting facts.
The Congressional budget office, which I don’t put a lot of faith in, in terms of their accuracy, and this even proves their inaccuracy, in 2020 projected that total discretionary spending for fiscal 2024 would be $1.5 trillion. And then they adjusted that for higher inflation $1.7 trillion.
It’s going to turn out to be $1.9 trillion. Now, in the way the world works, that’s close to a $300 billion increase. Washington lays this over 10 years then that’s $2 trillion of an increase in discretionary spending. A military part of that is actually going down, which means that the non-military part is going up at 19 percent.
So our non-discretionary spending, and this is where the Democrats live, is in handing money out to their constituents. And they might be labor unions and rich billionaires who are on the take with green energy projects. Or they might be lower-income people who are working. But here’s what’s also interesting. Since 1967 the bottom 20 percent, $9,600 a year in transfer payments.
Now the bottom 20 percent receives $45,000 a year in transfer payments and the percentage of working-age people who are working and the bottom 20 percent has dropped from 68 percent to 36 percent. Republicans want to say if you’re an able-bodied person and you’re able to work and you want to receive certain government benefits, You have to work. Human beings were designed by God to work.
We weren’t designed by God to sit around and not work. Now, once you get to a certain age, perhaps retiring, that’s a different story. But if you’re in the prime of your life and you’re not working, and you’re not doing what you’re designed doing you are going to be an unhappy person if you’re not doing what you’re designed to be doing.
But here’s another little tidbit. This was fascinating to me, and that’s about healthcare. If you work for a small company, small companies now require their employees to pay $2,000 in deductibles per family member, $2,000. And for large companies, it’s now over 30 percent of companies do that. But the premium for family coverage has gone that the employer’s cost has gone to $16,000 a year for a family and for workers and it’s now the worker part of that is up to $6,000.
Now, this is just fascinating information to me because the Democrats have used the healthcare system to try to transfer money from people who are working and make them pay much, much higher premiums to fund Obamacare and Medicaid, which is funding. People who aren’t working and who are then spending 100 bucks a month getting the same insurance that somebody who’s paying $2,000 a month for. And this is the thing that is simply not sustainable over time and has accelerated dramatically in the last 15 years.
And when you look at the history of civilizations that deteriorate and then ultimately collapse, it’s because they get their fiscal house completely out of order and turns to where the elites are the ones who are ultimately in charge. And then the whole thing just falls apart. We have an opportunity now if Republicans will hold the line to at least begin to tamp down this dramatic increase in spending that is just unsustainable and unbiblical.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Syed F Hashemi.
