Democrats love Big Government and believe that only big government can bring Americans success. But we see the failure of big government with the failure of Obamacare. Here are a few other big government programs that have also failed or failed to live up to its promise.
1. Social Security-The rate of return for the amount of money a person puts in over their lifetime is less than 2%. If a person could invest the money themselves they could make 2, 3, or 4 times that amount. Also the fund has been raided by Congress to pay for other programs and is just about bankrupt.
2. Medicare-This program is also bankrupt and doesn’t even give full coverage to those in it. People still have to buy supplement insurance to cover all the things that Medicare will not cover.
3. Medicaid-The government has mismanaged this program also and it will soon run out of money. This program is also bankrupting most states, because of unfunded mandates from the federal government. And doctors are turning away Medicaid patients, because of the low reimbursements and hassles.
4. Postal Service-Everyone knows that if a package has to get somewhere fast and on time you use UPS or FedEx. The Post Office is in the red for millions dollars and needs to drop Saturday service just to stay competitive with private carriers.
5. Public Education-We spend billions of dollars to educate our kids, but they still lag behind many other countries. And private schools do a better job of educating our kids with better results at a lower cost.
6. Energy-Even though we have millions of barrels oil on our own land and off of our own shores the government will not allow us to get it. This has made us dependant on foreign oil from our enemies. And even though counties like North Korea, Iran, and France can use nuclear technology for power, we are not allowed to use it. This is why our energy costs have continued to go up.
7. Health and Human Services-During the H1N1 flu outbreak, the government fail to keep vaccines in supply. Before the government got involved in the flu vaccine market there were hardly ever shortages.
8. Jobs-The Stimulus was to keep unemployment below 8%, but unemployment rose to10% and underemployment was over 20% for many months. The promise of the stimulus was wrong.
9. Housing-Because of government policies and involvement in the mortgage industry (Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac) many people were given loans for homes they could never afford. This caused the housing market to see declines in home values and massive bankruptcies.
10. Military-While our military is the best in the world, it has not always been this way. This had nothing to do with those men and women of the military, but the politicians in Washington. Remember we lost in Vietnam, because government gave up and tied the hands of our soldiers. It was not until Ronald Reagan that our military was finally built up to the superpower it is today. Even then it was the politicians that stop our military from giving us full victory in the first Iraq war. This is why we had to come back to finish the job. This second time in Iraq has taken longer than it should, because we tied the hands of our military to do its job.
The fact is “Big Government” really does nothing well. Small government, local government, private business, private charities, ground commanders, families, and individuals are what make America great. Our greatest doesn’t come from the government, but from the people. American is not about what we get from the government, but the freedom to go after what we want. With that freedom we will sometimes fail and have to deal with hardships. But we also have the opportunity for success and the rewards of hard work. In American you could loose everything one year, then get it all back the next plus 10 times more. It is not about Big Government success, but the freedom for success or failure of the American people that makes us great.
