I would like to understand something better here. A lot of people are opposed to Government taxes being collected from us the taxpayers for charitable endeavours. Its not that these people don’t help in local communities but they don’t want their money stolen from them through taxation.
As a person who understands business, I know that when you purchase supplies from a company, the price per unit goes down when you order in higher quantities. Let’s say that the government wants to start up soup kitchens. It has been calculated that to feed a person would cost $1.50 at the local level. However, the government gets involved in nationally with this and by purchase power can get the same supplies for $0.89. Which means that more people can be fed or less money is being spent (taken) from us than if it was done locally.
Granted Governments are not the most efficient business people, I grant you, but rather than cut off taxes for that worthwhile endeavour, we should work within the system to make it more efficient?
I would also like to ask people here if they were opposed to the federal government helping (taxes) the survivors of Hurricane Katrina? I remember some people criticizing the Government for that.
Honestly, and I know I am going to sound callous here, but if you choose to live in a flood plane, below sea level, at the delta of the biggest river in North America and in the epicenter of a hurricane zone, you sorta deserve what you get.
jb-williams.com/notyourstogive.htm
"It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing with the question.
The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means.
What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he.
If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give at all; and as
the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity and to any amount you may think proper.
You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. 'No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity."
“Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this country as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have Thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week’s pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life.”
“The congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from necessity of giving what was not yours to give.
The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.”
“So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point.
It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you.”
