Increasing government spending only makes our problems worse

A new vision for the future

The typical politician’s playbook for elections consists in paying off certain groups of voters with proposals such as: no tax on tips, tax deductions for down payments on a home, new child tax credits, and student loan forgiveness. 

All of these proposals have three things in common that speak against them.

First, they each favor a specific group of people – restaurant workers, new home buyers, new parents, college graduates – with a giveaway that will have to be paid for by everyone else. For instance, the down payment tax deduction will increase demand for homes without increasing supply and thereby push overall home prices even higher. 

Second, by creating a specific class of people to receive benefits, such giveaways will encourage fraudulent claims. We saw this phenomenon with the COVID policies on unemployment insurance, which resulted in an estimated $100 billion in payments to fraudsters.

Third, these proposals all involve increased government spending and will result in even more national debt, which is already spiraling out of control at the rate of almost $2 trillion per year, while revenues amount to only $4.4 trillion per year. This ballooning debt will lead to more inflation and economic collapse if it is not brought under control.

I have a different plan. 

Instead of passing out money to favored groups, I want to reduce government spending first and then reward everyone for such restraint by both reducing the budget deficit and returning money to citizens equally. We can do this by phasing out the entire welfare and entitlement system, which currently costs $4 trillion per year, so that we can return this money to citizens as a $16,000 per year universal basic income (or universal tax credit) that, in my plan, would amount to $3 trillion per year on a steady state basis after transition costs. This $3 trillion per year would not be an expense but part of the savings produced by first cutting government spending by $4 trillion per year. The other $1 trillion per year saved can be used to reduce our budget deficit and fund transition costs.

Because our current system creates specific classes of people to receive payments, we spur people to use their ingenuity to game the system. My plan puts money back into everyone’s hands equally and relies on free markets in which businesses would offer what currently is being provided by the government. By dissolving the government monopoly on services such as health care and retirement insurance, my plan encourages people to start businesses to provide services in the most cost-effective way possible. This new system has little room for fraud and would reward people for using their ingenuity to provide value to consumers.

You can find more details about my plan at DavidPanforCongress.com. Please help to get the word out by forwarding this message to friends, family, and neighbors. You can also meet me at my upcoming fundraiser in Santa Ana at 5-7 pm on September 25. RSVP at info@davidpanforcongress.com for more information. Together, we can save our country from useless government spending and return this money to the people.