“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. Americans deserve better.”
So said Senator Barack Obama in 2006. Now as President, he thinks otherwise. In fact, Obama only a few months ago requested a “clean” increase with no spending cuts or tax increases attached to it. But political reality – and poll after poll detailing voters’ disdain for our nation’s growing debt – forced him to consider cutting spending on his dear government entitlements and investments.
To me the whole conversation of increasing the debt ceiling is insane. And insanity has been described as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Our country takes in enough from general tax receipts to keep paying our current debt holders. And enough in employment taxes to currently pay our Social Security recipients and to currently pay our Medicare bills.
But our federal government will never take in enough to fund its massive government structure which is like an octopus with tentacles in every aspect of our lives. A structure in which the average federal government salary now exceeds the average salary of everyday working Americans. And a structure in which some 40% of Americans get some kind of federal government benefit. So to keep funding its well-paid bureaucracy and benefits, Uncle Sam borrows BILLIONS of dollars EACH DAY to fund its operations.
And wait until Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014 with its dozens of new bureaucracies to manage its tens of thousands of new rules and regulations. Even the Congressional Budget Office now realizes Obamacare will add to our deficit spending rather than being self-sufficient through its new penalty fees and employer taxes.
Certainly our ongoing military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya keep adding to our financial woes. I, for one, was very candid in a previous column that such efforts should be reimbursed to a large extent from the resources of those countries in which we are involved and our government’s failure to obtain such payback is unacceptable to me.
Most importantly, the ongoing debate on our country’s debt ceiling is really a philosophical battle about the purpose and structure of our government. Do we go the direction of the country of Greece which is nearly insolvent because it has finally borrowed more than it can pay back to fund its government social programs? Or do we follow the path of the majority of our states which require balanced budgets each year?
Obama is right about one thing. This deficit spending and ongoing borrowing is not a Democratic or Republican problem. It is an American problem. And we need to face up to it once and for all before we reach a precipice which could easily result in the end of the world’s greatest democracy.
In today’s economy, most families have had to downsize their spending to match the revenues of their businesses and salaries. So why should our federal government not have to do the same? President Obama and a majority of Democratic Congressmen and Senators seem to think that Uncle Sam is immune to such situations and they can just use our nation’s credit card and printing presses to keep the party going.
Much has been written that increasing taxes on the “rich” or closing corporate loopholes can help close the deficit gap. While I have no problem in eliminating special interest loopholes – including those used by Obama’s best friends at General Electric (NBC, MSNBC, Bravo, etc.), I know that raising taxes on the rich will be biting the hand that feeds the federal coffers and pays the salaries of countless working Americans. You need to encourage the wealthy individuals and corporations to keep doing what they are doing and not discourage them with punitive tax levels.
But even if Congress and the President have agreed on long-term spending cuts by the time you read this column, you can rest assured that unless our federal government’s spending is limited to a certain percentage of our nation’s gross domestic income except in times of national emergency, new spending will quickly make those cuts purely symbolic.
