I drove to Philadelphia last week just to take a break for a few days.  Tolls on the way down came to $24.50.  Coming back, they amounted to $16.  That’s $40 for the right to travel from one city to another.

While in the City of Brotherly Love, we stayed at a nice hotel with a reasonable rate.  But there was a $25 room tax for each of the three nights.  Another $75.

I’m reminded about the high cost of living these days and how much of that cost is attributed to big government.  You literally cannot move without paying something to the government.

That’s why I laugh when letter writers tell me that we live in one of the lowest taxed countries in the world.  They point to the rate of federal tax as if that is the only money that is exacted by government agencies.

Federal tax actually is surprisingly reasonable.  It only takes 13% of my salary but, of course, on top of that I also pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis.  New York State removes another 6% from my check and New York City exacts another 4%.  Add on the revenue for Medicare and disability insurance to relieve us of another 6.5%.  Add it up and 27% of my check is automatically taken because of the various levels of government.

There’s more.  Real estate tax is rising and last year was about 5% of my salary.  There’s also the cost of water that comes in a quarterly bill.  And check the amount attributed to taxes on your electric, gas, phone, and cable TV bills.  For good measure, there’s sales tax whenever you buy a piece of furniture or little extra around the house.

Because the government doesn’t feel it gets enough of your money to meet its costs, so it has employed extra traffic enforcement agents to write parking tickets and people who check your garbage to make sure you’re recycling to occasionally write a ticket that makes your wallet even lighter.
In case you don’t get the point, my thesis is that we are burdened by the cost of a government that cannot control itself and continues to overspend.  As if it hasn’t repressed you enough, government is now trying to define who we are and what we are allowed to do, as witnessed by the HHS regulations in the new Obamacare law.

Not only does the government want to tell us what we must purchase but it also wants to limit the definition of religious liberty and freedom of conscience in order to limit the  number of people who qualify for an opt-out.  Government is becoming Big Brother and frankly is getting in the way of everyone’s freedom and rights.

There was a stir over the weekend because Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican candidate for president, was overheard saying that he could live with cuts to the Education Dept. and the Housing and Urban Development Corp.  There were howls from the free spenders.  How dare he!

I think he’s on the right track.  Like any family, the government should not be spending more than it brings in.  If it can’t afford the salaries, it should not be employing the people.  It would also lessen its control over our everyday lives.

Back to Romney!  If he makes cuts to the Education Dept., maybe he won’t have the money to pay for someone to write sex education curricula that are offensive to so many of us.

As a matter of fact, maybe he should cut every government agency so that the land of the free can return to being free.  We all will breathe easier with government off our backs.  Put a little money back in my check so that I can spend it where I want to spend it.