Largely an ongoing joke, I don’t write new articles on the debt ceiling debate. I just re-post the same one I wrote in 2011. Since the debate remains completely fake, why bother to write on a problem Congress will inevitably ignore—spending. Feel free to read my original posts and judge if anything has changed. Enjoy Washington’s ritual of fake debate for political posturing, but never actual action. Both parties will do nothing for the next two years but spend more money and rack up more debt. I’ll see you in a couple years to touch base when nothing has changed.
From my post update on May 29, 2023 Congress agreed on an idiotic deal to raise the debt ceiling. Nothing will change except the national debt—which always increases in sizes. No one one will touch the primary drivers of the debt. No in DC cares. They will continue running up debt, printing more money, and devaluing the dollar. This translates to inflation which is a tax that hits lower and middle class people hardest.
Sadly, my editorial below still rings true despite the fact that it was published in the July 21, 2011 issue of The Hill. Time has passed, but DC remains the same – liars, thieves, frauds and demagogues. The Republic is burning, yet their actions (or in-actions) remain as predictable as ever. Change will not come from DC. Only individuals, through the states re-establishing federalism, can solve the problems which lay before us.
Purposefully dripping with self-righteous, annoyed, and exaggerated prose…
From my original post on July 21, 2011 in The Hill: To President Obama and members of the House and Senate leadership
Long ago, you plunged a dagger into the heart of the American dream, and began to kill the most precious gift we have preserved for each generation: liberty. It is our freedom to choose, our freedom to succeed and even our freedom to dream. For what dreams remain in a country wrought with debt, burden and unwanted obligation to the unrelenting, unflinching hand of force, our own government. You are stealing our future, and it is coming to fruition in the current debt and budgetary crisis.
The problem begins on the island of misfits, known as Washington D.C., where you have become spoiled brats more obsessed with personal gain and self-preservation than short or long term solutions for the American people.
Out in the real world, we are tired of your ridiculous talking points meant to achieve political objectives for your respective side, and we are done with hollow promises about getting government spending under control. You know why it’s not under control – because none of you want it to be under control. Because giving an inch on your sacred cows means weakening your own power, your own influence and your own means to that god-like position.
Like every family in this country understands, you must live within your means. So when you don’t have the money, you cut back. Yes, it would require trimming, but we could live on the same income we had a few years ago, and that is exactly what we are demanding of you.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Defense and the Treasury (mostly payment on the debt) – these 4 areas of expenditure eclipse all federal tax revenue before we even consider any other departments that make up the remainder of the budget.
True leadership requires making tough decisions on: benefit criteria for Social Security and Medicare, reduction and block granting of Medicaid funds to the states while at the same time eliminating the extortion process that ties their hands through federal mandating, reductions in defense spending (foreign and domestic) and significant cuts in every single other federal department.
Cut those things, cap the spending and balance the budget – a simple starting point. Without definitive and long term purpose in solving this crisis, you are risking much more than a simple default.
Here are some important concepts for you through the negotiations:
1. Stop blaming each other. Each side can take blame for respective parts of this mess. No one is perfect and everyone knows it, so stop acting like spoiled brats playing with other people’s toys.
2. Everything is subject to being cut and significantly reformed. There is no money, so across the board cuts are needed. It doesn’t favor any interests over another. In fact, if you cut 15 percent a year for the next three years and cap and balance, the budgetary crisis is solved.
3. Just for the Republicans: the military has tons of waste, abuse and flawed priorities. Saying this does not make one “unpatriotic.” It is reality. Worldwide spending of billions of dollars does not equate to providing for our common defense or keeping Americans safe. In fact, our best “defense” right now is financial solvency.
4. Just for the Democrats: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have broken formulas for solvency. Because these programs require significant reform does not mean anyone wants to abandon the elderly, poor or medically fragile. In fact, if significant reforms to these programs don’t occur immediately – you won’t be looking at a gradual change more easily absorbed. You will be faced with overnight collapse of the economy – meaning all those people lose in a much bigger way.
By the way, if it can be done at the state level – it should be, and that’s almost everything. Sending money to DC through a multi-billion dollar filter is complete lunacy. For this idiocy to work, you make the assumption that you or some other random bureaucrat knows how to run my life better than I do – in my own state, in my own town. Ridiculous.
Lastly—government doesn’t create jobs. Entrepreneurs create jobs. Even when you open a new government building or department, you are taking money from the existing work force and making that money far less productive than it would have been if left in the hands of citizens. You have no ability to produce anything, and are by definition of your very existence, a restriction on freedom and prosperity to all citizens. The best thing you can do is to stay out of the way.
There is one single fix to our problems: the fundamental limitation of government, and therefore the protection of personal and economic liberties for every American – the freedom to choose one’s own destiny without inhibition.
Personal Liberty + Economic Liberty = Prosperity. I call it the prosperity formula, and it’s obvious you never covered this in the real halls of education known as daily life.
