One thing I have witnessed while running this site is that there are a lot of people “new” to politics and the election process looking for information online. I often hear from people who say that they have never followed things closely and they may be interested in starting. So with that thought in mind I figured it would be a GREAT TIME to offer some unsolicited advice about following elections. Advice I have offered before and will probably offer again and again every few months.

That advice? When a candidate for office promises you something, be skeptical. Be VERY skeptical! Put another way, don’t bank on actually getting all that fun new stuff they promise.

Right now we are in a place in the campaign where the candidates cannot wait to spend the governments money. Universal Health Care, a bigger military, funding new technology research, education reform, tax cuts. You name it and the candidates are ready to promise it to you.

The problem is pretty basic. The government doesn’t have the money to fund any of these programs. How do I know? Because every year we are running five hundred billion dollar plus deficits. Put simply the government, every year, spends more money than it brings in. So how in the world do we do that?

It is simple, we charge the money we don’t have to the governments running tab or the national debt. You an see this debt here. It is a very big number. At this moment every day we add $1.41 billion more to it. So who do we owe this debt too? Well lots of people and in lots of different ways. Some of it is good debt, like government bonds. Most of it is owned by China who has been going around buying it up from other countries. Why? You probably won’t like the answer and I am just going to skip that whole mess and stick with promises.

The thing to remember is we have now had seven years of rapid spending. In the 1990’s we started working toward balancing the budget. This still meant we owed a lot of debt, however it meant every year we were at least heading toward being even. That all kind of disappeared. We fund the military, social security, medicare, federal employees, research and all kinds of things and we do it without collecting enough money to pay for it. So how can we add to that system?

The popular idea right now for the Democrats is to fund new programs by rescinding the tax cuts given by the president and the Congress in 2001. Taking back those tax cuts would be a great new source of revenue. Revenue that could be used to pay for the things we already cannot fund. Instead of paying down debt though their plan is to spend this revenue on new things. Things that may end up costing a heck of alot more than we think they will cost today (as government programs and most things tend to. Ever gotten an “estimate” from a contractor and then the final bill?).

It is worse than these new programs costing more. A lot of the candidates have already promised the Bush tax cuts for the programs they proposed early on. For instance Barack Obama early on proposed using the tax cuts to fund his Health Care proposal. Now he proposes using the tax cuts to fund other tax cuts, these for the poor and some of the middle class. So which is it? The campaign says they found “other revenue” for that. Which either means a tax hike for the rich, cutting programs the government already funds or simply adding the cost to the mounting debt.

If the government cuts spending it might well do it by removing programs and assistance that goes to the states. Things like the transportation authority fixing bridges or Homeland Security helping to secure D.C., Los Angeles or New York City. Less money from the federal government to the states means states will need revenue. They will either have to cut spending, raise taxes or add to their own debt. See the ripple effect?

But it gets even more complicated than that. The president is not in control of spending, the Congress is. The president can veto what they do (and then the Congress can overturn that veto with the right amount of votes) but the president cannot just walk in and spend all this money to create health care systems and cut taxes without consultation. They will need the Congress.

The Congress has its own ideas about how to spend money. They need to get elected too and so all these people running for the Senate and House have plans for those 2001 tax cuts and new tax cuts and new plans and more funding for pet projects in the states. Try and cut spending from the Congress to California and that states Senators and Representatives will fight hard to stop you and to stop your programs.

In the end, it is nice that the candidates let us know what they would like to do. We probably wouldn’t elect them if they didn’t. With that said they are going to try and tell us they will do all the things we would love in a perfect world. Fight terrorism, rebuild infrastructure, cut taxes, create more programs, things that we cannot possibly pay for all together.

So in short, the rule is simple. When a politician makes you a promise, especially when money is concerned, BE SKEPTICAL!