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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Mushrooming National Deficit

The national debt of the United States is huge--$11.4 trillion and counting. I know some critics are totally opposed to the idea of conspiracy theories but I believe the federal government is on a mad dash to undermine our nation and destroy our currency. If not, then we have the most incompetent, the most stupid politicians that's ever existed in our country the past 233 years. I don't believe that's the case. They know what they're doing. They're throwing money away left and right. The common people aren't benefitting from that money. President Barack Obama's budget is supposed to be $3.6 trillion or something to that effect this year. President Obama wants to overhaul our nation's health care system and create nationalized health care, we're still bailing out troubled industries, and he desires to place a tax on the energy we use in the cap and trade bill. Where's all this money going to come from?

I can remember hearing the media scream about the runaway deficit during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. I believe the debt reached around $3 trillion at the end of his presidency. In 1982 he established the Grace Commission to examine all the waste and inefficiency in regards to how tax dollars were spent. The Congress didn't act upon the report. There was a lot of wasteful spending on the part of Congress during his presidency. He trimmed back a lot of domestic spending. There was some waste in the defense department in which they bought toilet seats for $600 and hammers for $400. There was a lot of wasteful pork barrel spending as well from Congress.

The national debt starting mushrooming the most recently under Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush. During most of his presidency both the House and Senate were controlled by Republicans. However, there were great increases in both domestic and defense spending. Bush was a huge spender in both of those areas. Entitlement spending grew as well. He even voted for a Medicare bill which allowed for prescription drug coverage. There were only a few times he vetoed any bills while president. He spent more than any president previous to him. President Obama is now George W. Bush on steroids and his spending is already surpassing Bush's spending.

A few years ago then Vice-President Dick Cheney cited a quote from Reagan and stated that deficits dont' matter much. However, you must take that into context. During Reagan's time, we had more manufacturing jobs as well as jobs that were better paying in general. Due to the signing of Free Trade Agreements such as NAFTA by Bill Clinton in 1994 and CAFTA by George W. Bush in 2005, we've lost quite a bit of our manufacturing base. We don't have the level of high-paying jobs that we once had. As a result, we don't have the tax base to collect the needed revenues to fund these programs. How can we fund Obama's socialist agenda when many Americans are out of work and we don't have as many high paying jobs like we once had? It's foolish.

With the growth of the deficit, the Federal Reserve is supplying cheap dollars to help pay for our goods and services. The result of that will be inflation. When we have more dollars chasing fewer goods, that leads to inflationary increases. The only reason America is not totally bankrupt yet is due to the willingness of the Federal Reserve to print cheap dollars as well as China still purchases our treasury bills to fund our debt. If China ever reneges on paying for our bad debt, it could cause our economy to go on a downward spiral.

What are some of the solutions? First of all, we need to abolish the Federal Reserve. The Constitution calls for Congress to coin our money. The Federal Reserve is an autonomous institution that's never been audited. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) is pushing through a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. I guarantee you Congress will sit on that bill. We also need to vote out all our elected officials that spend our tax dollars unwisely. We need to severely trim our budget to eliminate unnecessary spending. We need to eliminate all these massive layers of bureaucracy that are inefficient. We need to eliminate all these "czar" posts that our presidents in the last 30 years have created. We would probably save billions of dollars if we remove most of our government bureaucrats in our government that's not contributing to the vitality of this nation. We need to renegotiate some of our free trade deals which would help America regain some of its manufacturing base. We need to lower taxes on those families that pay taxes. We need to lower the tax rates for small businesses. If we the people don't demand accountability when it comes to government spending, our way of life that we've know for years will be gone.

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