Happy Cost Of Government Day!

*sigh*

Congratulations! Today is the day in the year, according to the Americans for Tax Reform, that you can start working for yourself. 224 days of working just to pay taxes leaves a meager 141 days out of the year in which the money you earn is legally yours. That's 26 more days of taxation than we endured just last year. Frederic Bastiat would be horrified. 

Read the full ATF report on the cost of government here.(PDF)

Since it's such a big day for your bank account, I'll go into a bit more detail.  Here's RedState:

Stimulus spending. Bank and auto company bailouts. Cap and Tax. Obamacare….just what will Obama cost you?

The answer is roughly one month of your life—this year.

Americans for Tax Reform has calculated and "celebrated" Cost of Government Day each year for the past 20 years.  We add up total government spending and total government regulations–federal, state and local and divide by the national income to calculate how many days you and I work to pay the total cost of government.  The well known Tax Freedom Day–usually about a third of the way through the year–only calculates the tax burden, leaving out the costs of deficit spending and regulations.

Last year Cost of Government Day was July 16.  This year it is August 12.  Twenty-six days, almost one month more for the cost of government. And to cheer you up, this doesn't count the costs of "Cap and Trade" taxes on energy use or the additional one, two, or three trillion dollars to "reform" our health care system by the noted physicians Obama, Reid and Pelosi.

The growth in the cost of government comes largely from the bailouts, the "stimulus" and the dramatic spending hike in the first Reid/Obama/Pelosi budget.

But isn't this the typical direction of things?  Eh, kind of:

In the past, the Cost of Government Day would improve by a week or so during the Reagan years, fall backwards in the wrong direction under tax and spend Bush 41, and improve a week or two during the GOP controlled congress that fought Clinton, and we lost time during the Bush 43 years when the same Republican Congress forgot to fight the spender wearing the R jersey.  But those movements of a week or two in the cost of government day took place over eight years.  This jump of twenty-six days in the wrong direction took place in just one year.

Much more here.  By the time Obama and the Democrats in Congress get through with us, CoGD will probably be approaching Thanksgiving.  Won't that be rewarding, all in the name of the greater good?

There's my two cents.