IT’S THE DEBT STUPID

The country is embroiled in constant debate about different topics like healthcare, education, the wars, jobs, the effectiveness of the stimulus, and the growth of government. When I close my eyes I can envision us all sitting around on couches in this vast living room shouting across the open spaces and shaking our fists at the idiots who can’t see the reason and logic of our arguments. That is because people are stupid and no matter how well one constructs one’s point of view those other people just don’t grasp it.

Something I noticed in this living room is this huge mound of “stuff” sitting right in the middle of the floor. No one is really talking about it, except for a few people out on the fringes we can’t really hear. I do see them though…jumping up and down pointing and shouting something. So every once in a while we all get up off our couches and go down to the polling places and cast our votes for the people who represent us. We all know them, they have all been in Washington or Austin or Lincoln or Sacramento for years. We go into the little booth and pull the lever, and then we go back to the living room and resume our heated conversation with the other side.

That mound in the middle keeps getting bigger and the people out there on the fringes get more animated. I wish I could make out what they are shouting about. So I get up off the couch and walk over to that growing mound and notice that the whole thing is made up of little scraps of paper with the letters IOU written on them. How strange is that? It finally dawns on me what those people back there are shouting…”You are arguing about the wrong stuff,” they are screaming.

Right then I had an epiphany. We are missing the point. We are in serious trouble as a nation and we are distracted by the politics of the moment. What is worse is that those people we just pulled the lever for to send back to the centers of power, they aren’t in the room and I don’t think they are paying any attention to the mound of IOUs. They have a singular goal in mind and that is to get re-elected and produce laws and services. We are drowning in laws and services but we don’t send anyone to public office who knows what the solution is.

What is left unsaid is that the unfunded liabilities of just two programs, Medicare and Social Security are 8 times greater than the gross domestic product of the United States. Let that soak in for a moment. The current debt is 80% of the GDP and the debt is projected to rise from 14 to 23 trillion dollars in the next ten years and the current government is funding our country by borrowing money against assets we don’t have and printing money that has no backing in the economy. Now pause and think about what could happen when interest rates rise on the borrowed money.

The solution is outside of the thinking of the government. People who go to the power centers to represent constituents do not think in terms of fewer laws and less services. Neither party has the political will to send people to power under the banner of fixing any of this. The solution is to drastically reduce the role of government in our lives. That means getting rid of entire cabinet position departments and turning out the lights. It means changing the definition of the word “entitlement.” It means turning off the spigot of money to anything that doesn’t directly protect the country as an entity. It means getting the government out of the way of the economy so that capitalism can flourish unimpeded by crushing regulation. It means that the people who are about to be the old people are going to have to do with less so that our children and grandchildren don’t witness the collapse of our way of life.

I can guarantee you that there is nobody on any ballot who is prepared to do what has to be done to save the republic. The time has come where everyone needs to decide whether to ride the country down to the inevitable crash if we continue down this path or to step up and do what is necessary to salvage the United States. If you are voting in the primaries to return your leaders to office you are part of the problem. If you intend to go to the polls in November and vote for the status quo you are who I am talking about when I talk about those who haven’t the courage to fix this nation. If you think we can spend and borrow and print our way out of this then you are as deluded as that fellow in the White House.