“A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.” — Anonymous

“I’m proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.” — Arthur Godfrey

“The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.” — Barry Goldwater

American taxpayers are feeling the pinch as they see $Trillions going to everyone but themselves and their families.

We believe that the most onerous form of U.S. taxpayer abuse is the federal government’s subsidizing of failure.

Taxes should be used to reward success, not failure. That’s common sense. If you want more success then reward conduct that produces more success.

Today, the vast amount of federal taxpayer money being spent is on those who are failures. Therefore, by definition, we the people get for our money more and more failures!

Be it companies, banks, non-profits, people or nation states. Bailouts are now the norm rather than the exception. Bailouts and government subsidies are now the rule rather than the exception—politicians are subsidizing failure.

Therefore we get more and more failure.

Here are our top egregious abuses created by the federal government against the American taxpayers from the year of our Lord 1635 to the year 2023:

1. The 16th Amendment. Perhaps the most egregious act ever put into the U.S. Constitution is the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Amendment XVI) which was passed by Congress in 1909 in response to the 1895 Supreme Court case of Pollock v. Farmers, allowing Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. Bill Benson’s findings, published in “The Law That Never Was, The Fraud of the 16th Amendment and Personal Income Tax,” made a convincing case that the 16th amendment was not legally ratified and that Secretary of State Philander Knox was not merely in error, but committed fraud when he declared it ratified in February 1913. Read more about how the 16th Amendment was not ratified by the states. The most harmful and long lasting part of what the 16th Amendment did is provide presidents and the U.S. Congress with an endless flow of money to fund failures.
2. The Failed Great Society Agenda. Funding Broken Families. One of the first acts of funding failure was Lyndon B. Johnson’s failed 1963 Great Society program. A program that made sweeping cultural and legislative reforms that failed. The Great Society began the destruction of the traditional family. It created fatherless homes where if a man was present in the household then welfare was denied. A series of 200 laws were passed to and signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson from 1964 to 1966 that fundamentally transformed for the worse public education, healthcare and America’s culture of meritocracy, in the name of “reversing racial inequality.” Rather than reducing poverty, Johnson’s Great Society created more government dependency. Click here to watch the video: Lyndon B. Johnson: Failures & Downfalls.
3. Taxpayer Funded Failed Public Schools. On April 23, 1635, the first public school in what would become the United States was established in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Latin School, established in 1635, was the first school in what is now the United States. Although it has changed locations, the public school is still operating today. Since 1635 government control of education has failed to teach children how to succeed. Today America’s public education system teaches children what to think not how to think. One example is for the first time in 100 years America’s average IQ has declined. Schools have become the propaganda arm of government because it is the government that funds public schools. Add to this the growing influence of teacher’s unions and we have the perfect mix of failure built upon failure. This government control has inextricably lead to the dumbing down of young Americans to a 6th-grade level. Note: According to FAIR, providing education, health care, law enforcement, and social and government services to illegal aliens and their dependents costs Texas taxpayers $12.1 billion a year.
4. Corporate Bailouts Paid for by Taxpayers. In an April 15, 2020 Forbes article titled The Truth About The COVID-19 Bailouts Kathryn Judge reported, “One of the biggest lies that very smart people are spreading right now is that the government’s efforts to shield large corporations from COVID-19 do not give rise to moral hazard. They do. By allowing shareholders and creditors to avoid losses they agreed to bear, these policies will induce companies to continue to take on too much debt. This increases the fragility of the corporate sector and makes it more likely that the government will have to come to the rescue again when the next crisis strikes. Acknowledging this moral hazard does not negate the importance of the rescue efforts underway. When fear and uncertainty cause markets to seize up, the government should help restore the flow of money and credit. Doing so eases the pain that the crisis inflicts and lays the foundation for a smoother recovery. But that is no reason to deny the government’s recent efforts also have costs, particularly when there are ways to reduce those costs.”
5. Bank Bailouts Funded by Taxpayers. CNN Money reported that since 2008 the Treasury Department has invested about $200 billion in hundreds of banks through its “Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP)” program. Congress initially authorized $700 billion for TARP in October 2008, that authority was reduced to $475 billion by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act). This was an effort to prop up capital and support new lending which led to banks becoming dependent on taxpayer funded bailouts. Here’s a list of the banks that got bailed out. This does not include the most recent bailouts of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and several other banks in 2023, which has in effect nationalized the U.S. banking system.
6. Taxpayer Funded Healthcare. David U. Himmelstein, MD and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH in a 2016 National Library of Medicine study titled The Current and Projected Taxpayer Shares of US Health Costs found “We tabulated official Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services figures on direct government spending for health programs and public employees’ health benefits for 2013, and projected figures through 2024. We calculated the value of tax subsidies for private spending from official federal budget documents and figures for state and local tax collections. Results. Tax-funded health expenditures totaled $1.877 trillion in 2013 and are projected to increase to $3.642 trillion in 2024. Government’s share of overall health spending was 64.3% of national health expenditures in 2013 and will rise to 67.1% in 2024. Government health expenditures in the United States account for a larger share of gross domestic product (11.2% in 2013) than do total health expenditures in any other nation.” Note: This study does not include the costs of providing free healthcare to illegal aliens. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has projected the cost of funding illegal aliens at $21.6 billion.
7. Taxpayer Funded Green Energy Projects. In 2019 TalkBusiness.net in a column titled Renewable energy collects 93% of federal subsidies reported, Renewable energy obtained 93% of federal energy fuel subsidies while generating 22% of total U.S. energy in fiscal year 2016, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Many states also waive tax payments for renewable energy or offer other deals for renewable energy production. The EIA recently evaluated energy-related subsidies that the federal government provided in fiscal year 2016 as an update to a study on fiscal years 2013 and 2010. Federal subsidies that support non-fossil fuels, including renewable energy and nuclear power, were $7.047 billion in fiscal year 2016, and more than 14 times higher that the subsides for fossil fuels, which were $489 million. The previous subsidies don’t include state or local subsidies, mandates or incentives. Three-fifths of states have mandated levels of renewable energy production, and the incentives that many states provide have been a result of lobbying by renewable energy interests, according to the Institute for Energy Research (IER).” American Action Forum estimates that the Green New Deal (GND) as enacted “will cost every American household $65,000 per year and a total price tag could reach $93 trillion in the first 10 years alone.“
8. Taxpayer funded Murder via Abortion. On March 28, 2017 Carole Novielli reported, “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published shocking information dispelling Planned Parenthood’s deceptive talking points that federal taxpayers are not funding abortions. This information is critical, because if the American taxpayers understood what their money really goes to, they would oppose federal funding of the nation’s largest abortion provider, whose abortion market share is almost 35 percent nationally…A 2015 Forbes blog on health care and entitlement reform contended that ‘taxpayers subsidize roughly 24% of all abortion costs in the U.S. with 6.6% borne by federal taxpayers and the remaining 17.4% picked up by state taxpayers.’” On Oct 2, 2015 Forbes’ Chris Conover reported, “As best I can determine, taxpayers subsidize roughly 24% of all abortion costs in the U.S. with 6.6% borne by federal taxpayers and the remaining 17.4% picked up by state taxpayers. If we apply the 24% figure to the total number of abortions,  this is equivalent to taxpayers paying the full cost of 250,000 abortions a year, with about 70,000 financed by federal taxpayers  and 180,000 financed by state taxpayers.”
9. Funding of Foreign Wars. American taxpayers have funded multiple war efforts from the War of 1812 cost $1.78 billion, Mexican-American War cost $2.72 billion, American Revolution cost $2.75 billion, Spanish-American War cost $10.33 billion, American Civil War (Union and Confederate) cost $91.16 billion, WW I cost $381.8 billion, WW II cost $4.69 trillion, Korean War cost $389.81 billion, Vietnam War cost $843.63 billion, War in Afghanistan cost $910.47 billion, Iraq War cost $1.01 trillion, and now the War between Russia and Ukraine $115 billion cost to date. Despite the cost in lives and money, America has not clearly won any war since WW II.
10. Taxpayer Funded Pornography, including Drag Queen Performances, to Under-aged Children. American taxpayers went from the 1981 Congressionally passed Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA), to the 1996 Title V of the Welfare Reform Act, or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), set up a new system of grants for states providing abstinence-only-until-marriage education that used a specific eight-point criteria, known as the “A-H definition.”, to the 2000  Congressionally created a third abstinence-only education program (Title XI, §1110 of the Social Security Act), funded through the maternal and child health block grant’s Special Projects of Regional and National Significance Programs (SPRANS), that bypassed the need for state approval, to 2007 when nearly half of all states had decided against applying for state-based abstinence-only education due to both its restrictions and the requirement that states contribute matching funds.  These states include Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In 2009  President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget eliminated most federal funding for abstinence-only sex-education programs, replacing it with funding for  increase contraceptive use.  Obama‘s programs permitted discussion of birth control. Today public schools via federal and state funds and donations from non-profits are promoting the grooming of under-aged children for sex, placing pornographic books in public school libraries, the Community Foundation of Sarasota County fund ‘QUEERCON’ at the School of Arts and Sciences a Florida school and libraries and schools hosting drag queen reading hours. Click here to read more articles about Drag Queens and the grooming of underaged children.
11. Taxpayer Funded Chemical and Surgical Castration of Men, Women and Children. In an October 7, 2022 Federal Times article titled Federal health plans to expand gender-affirming care coverage for 2023 reported, “…A quarter of Fortune 500 companies offer transition-related care to employees, including popular providers like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna. This year, coverage will again include gender-affirming care, defined by the Kaiser Family Foundation as ‘social, psychological, behavioral or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity’. This move traces back to President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order on diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in the federal workforce, which directs the Office of Personnel Management to ‘promote equitable healthcare coverage and services for enrolled LGBTQ+ employees’ and covered family members through the Federal Employee Health Benefits program…The average government contribution will increase by 6.6%, while the enrollee’s share will increase an average of 8.7%. That means for a biweekly pay period, an employee on a self-only plan will pay about $8.11 more. Those in a family plan can expect an average increase of $20.87.”
12. LGBTQE+ Grooming of Children Funded by Taxpayers. On May 3, 2022 Dr. Beverly Newman, Ed.D. wrote, “Early exposures to pornographic images and verbiage are amongst the very best ways to facilitate lifelong sexual, emotional, educational, social, and mental health problems.  Here’s how pornographically-sexualized children can become dysfunctional, suicidal, and homicidal: 1. Bisexual violence is greatly promoted via pornography in which the human body is objectified as a source of entertainment for adult pleasure; 2. Children exposed to pornography are likely to flounder all of their lives and never fully recover from their emotional problems emanating from pornography abuse; 3. Children and teens preoccupied with pornographic images in their minds do not focus or concentrate on their studies; 4. Socially, children abused with pornography are likely to function at the extremes of anti-social behaviors – loners or youths constantly needing others around them. The loners can become homicidal or fiercely entombed in themselves; 5. In terms of mental health problems, children sexualized via pornography are at least as sexually-abused as children who are molested. Violence inherent in pornography becomes normalized in the course of human development, and sexualized children can present without conscience or compassion.” Newman concluded that, “In terms of mental health problems, children sexualized via pornography are at least as sexually-abused as children who are molested. Violence inherent in pornography becomes normalized in the course of human development, and sexualized children can present without conscience or compassion.” Our public schools, colleges and universities are promoting the LGBTQE+ agenda under the current administrations Diversity, Inclusion and Equity policies.
13. Taxpayer Funding of Bloated Government from the School House to the White House. The more enriched and powerful the governments at every level become the more dangerous they are to the “three Fs” — Faith, Family and Freedom.

The Bottom Line

American greatness was built upon the foundation of individual merit. That is why the U.S. Constitution begins with these words,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

America was built upon the ideal of “equal opportunity under the law.”

Governments at every level, on the other hand, have become enamored with the “myth” of “equality of outcomes.”

Equality of outcomes, like the failed Great Society, requires the redistribution of both wealth and opportunity.

Sadly, since the passage of the 16th Amendment, the government, not the market of ideas has become the sole arbiter of who wins and who loses.

This is why it is important for we the people to elect those who will defend our faith, families and freedoms.

Big government, using taxpayers money has destroyed our union, promotes injustice, funds domestic violence against its citizens (e.g. J6), and has destroyed our prosperity.

Today “the swamp” goes from the school house to the White House.

At each and every level they’re finding new ways to fund failure, which always promotes inequality.

America must return to the time when we promoted and rewarded success and entrepreneurship.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.