A Gift from the White House: Your 2013 Federal Taxpayer Receipt

As if transparency is the biggest issue here, the White House has sent out an interactive 2013 federal taxpayer receipt to show you how the money our government spent supposedly broke down last year…you know, as if you or I really had a say in any of this.

That’s right, just click on the link and you, too, can have the pleasure of entering your personal tax information to find out how much of your money Thievery Incorporated, er, the White House claims went where. The tagline reads, “…the Taxpayer Receipt gives you a breakdown of how your tax dollars are spent on priorities like education, veterans benefits, or health care.”

(Because, at just a quick glance it’s quite obvious that education at 1.66% and veterans benefits at 5.44% were real top priorities.)

Actually half — 49.98% — went to healthcare and national defense. But don’t kid yourself. What we call “defense” is actually called offense by a large part of the rest of the world. Still, it’s interesting to see that the U.S. spent 24.79% on “national defense” but only 2.06% on immigration, law enforcement and administration of justice together.

Although we are spending way more than any other country on the planet on healthcare — an amount equivalent to nearly 18% of our country’s gross domestic product (GDP) — apparently it isn’t garnering us very much in return, considering as a nation we are sitting at 42nd in life expectancy as compared to all other countries.

Perhaps if we’d spent more on “health research and food safety,” which only got 1.43%, we’d be a little higher on that list.

Some of our nation’s spending highlights also include a generous sum to Planned Parenthood, which received a record $540.6 million in taxpayer-funded grants last year, an amount equivalent to 45% of its total revenue. About 3% of that money went to the 327,166 abortions the organization completed across the nation in 2013.

I didn’t see a line on that list for all the president’s family vacations. I’m sure it’s in there somewhere, as Obama has been dubbed the “most internationally traveled president in his first five years”. Just the flight expenses of two of the Obamas vacations last year — one to Africa at $8,104,224 and the family’s Christmas trip to Honolulu, Hawaii at $7,781,361 — clocked in at nearly $16 million. And don’t forget Michelle and her daughters tagging along to Dublin, Ireland where they had lunch with U2 lead singer Bono, tossing on an additional $5 million to that trip’s tab according to info which had to be forcibly obtained through a Judicial Watch lawsuit.

“It is clear that the Obamas abused the perk of the president’s official trip to the G-8 summit for a luxury European vacation at taxpayer expense,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a press release. “And it is shameful that it took a federal lawsuit to obtain this information. Transparency goes by the wayside for the Obamas when it comes to covering up their abuse of taxpayer resources.” (source)

And don’t even get me started on the individual studies we actually do pay for, which include pressing scientific issues like this $3 million research that involved putting sick shrimp on treadmills.

Then again, we all know this electronic receipt is worth the paper it’s printed on; recall what the 1984 Grace Commission Report released under Ronald Reagan determined:

“Resistance to additional income taxes would be even more widespread if people were aware that:

One-third of all their taxes is consumed by waste and inefficiency in the Federal Government as we identified in our survey.

Another one-third of all their taxes escapes collection from others as the underground economy blossoms in direct proportion to tax increases and places even more pressure on law abiding taxpayers, promoting still more underground economy — a vicious cycle that must be broken.

With two-thirds of everyone’s personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government.“

And don’t forget the Federal Reserve because that’s just never going to be paid off. Ever.