(USA Today) I was reading an article on April 13, 2010 from USA Today about the soaring national debt. The article was inferring that erasing the United State's red ink won't be an easy or popular thing. Major cuts will have to take place in order to bring the national debt under control. President Obama created an eighteen-member, "bipartisan" commission to try to create ways to bring the national deficit under control. The chair and co-chair of the new committee are Erskine Bowles (White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton) and former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WYO). The current national debt as of to date is around $13 trillion dollars. Ten years ago the national debt was 3.4 trillion. The deficit has increased to another ten trillion under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The deficit increased to another trillion already in President Obama's first year. There have been projections that if deficit spending continues in the same pattern as the beginning of the Obama administration, then the debt could reach nearly 20 trillion by the time he leaves office. Many Americans are growing increasingly anxious over the mounting debt. As a result, the Tea Party formed last year which is anti-tax and anti-big government. The Tea Party has become politically involved trying to promote candidates that will restore this country to the roots that our Founding Fathers had established.
Right now the United States is in the midst of a recession. The private sector has shrunk since the mortgage meltdown involving subprime loans for housing. The federal government has added jobs on its payroll but the private sector hasn't grown much. Our government is still spending money in spite of the contraction of the private sector. Last year Congress approved a stimulus bill to place our country's back on track. How much stimulus money was appropriated to help small businesses? If anybody needed stimulus money to help spur the economy, it was the private sector. The only way to grow the economy is through the private sector. When the private sector adds jobs to the economy, then there will be more tax receipts going to the government. That's what's needed. When the private sector is at a standstill, then there's no new revenue going to the federal government. One of the options that's on the table is to increase taxes which isn't good for a nation that's in a recession. What's needed is to reduce the tax rate on businesses so they will have more money to invest in creating jobs. If more jobs are created, then new tax revenue will result from that. However, the federal government is very unsupportive of business. The government is always out to soak the rich and drain everything they can from the American people.
Moody's Investors Service issued a warning in March that the nation's triple-A credit rating would come under pressure unless economic growth exceeded projections and tougher actions were taken to tackle the deficit. A reduced credit rating would cause creditors to demand higher interest rates, raising the cost of borrowing money. Under Obama's tax and spending proposals, annual deficits would push the public debt to 90% of the economy by 2020, a level unseen since the years after World War II. Unless the economy grows, then our triple-A credit rating will be in trouble. Our creditors aren't going to place any faith in us if we can't grow jobs in the private sector and we don't seriously tackle the deficit. We must. We don't have any choice. None of our Congressmen and Senators are serious about tackling the deficit. None! It's all a dog-and-pony show.
There are a number of ways to reduce the deficit. The problem is our elected elite have no desire to do so. Here are some items that can be eliminated from the national debt. First of all, all the pork barreling projects that our Congressmen and Senators push for in Congress should be eliminated. All earmarks need to be eliminated. We can't afford all these special programs given the shape of our economy. Secondly, there are many organizations that we fund that we should now de-fund. We shouldn't be supporting the National Endowment of the Arts, the ACLU, or any of these other organizations that ask for money. There's some presidential cabinets that I believe should be eliminated. I'm all for education, but how has the Department of Education benefitted America? Jimmy Carter created that cabinet as a payback to the Teacher's Unions. We need to emphasize education but the Department of Education is just a drain. We also should eliminate the Department of Commerce and even the Department of Homeland Security. I was supportive of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security back in 2002, but after seeing how politically inept it is, we should eliminate it. How are they making America safer? The Department of Homeland Security hasn't been much help in regards to the latest oil spill. Janet Napolitano doesn't want to define Islamic terrorism for what it is. It also won't aid in cracking down illegal aliens or securing America's borders. So what purpose is it to continue funding this cabinet when it won't fight terrorism or make our homeland safer?
We also need to eliminate a lot of the bureacracy in Washington, D.C. as well. The more bureacracy we eliminate, the simpler and less expensive it will be to operate the federal government. We also need to stop allowing the Federal Reserve to print our money. The U.S. needs to print it's own money. It would save interest if America would print it's own money. Abraham Lincoln printed interest-free money which was called Greenbacks and it saved America a lot of money fighting the Civil War. Our federal government also needs to say no to these lobbyists in Washington, D.C. that ask for favors. That would save money. There are a number of projects we can eliminate to save money. It's just our elected elite don't have the political will to do so.
There also needs to be changes to our entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc. Healthcare costs are going to skyrocket as a result of the recently passed healthcare bill in March. There needs to be reform of the nation's healthcare system. There are ways we can reform healthcare without overhauling our nation's healthcare system. The first thing to do would be to eliminate fraud and waste in Medicare and Medicaid. Another idea is to set a cap on the dollar amount patients can sue doctors for medical malpractice. Tort reform would also help. Those things would make a huge difference in reducing the costs of healthcare. Concerning social security, our whole social security system was designed wrongly. The problem is, the money that's collected for social security is placed in a general fund where our politicians use it for spending purposes. There's not a lockbox for social security. Social Security is not even social security. Dave Ramsey calls it "social insecurity." There's no money accrued in a social security lockbox for our retirees. Instead, there's nothing but IOU's in which the government promises to pay back the money that's supposed to go into the social security fund. That's not going to happen. Those workers that are presently working are paying the benefits of today's retirees. That's not a deal. The number of workers in the U.S. is shrinking more all the time. How many workers will we have paying for the Social Security of the Baby Boomers in a few more years? It's scary. Instead of a government-backed social security system for retirees, there should be individual private accounts where those that work can donate a portion of income to that retirement account and it can accrue a percentage of interest for "x" number of years until retirement. Private IRA's is what American citizens need to rely upon instead of a government-backed social security which isn't social security. Anytime there's a government fund created where government officials can place their hands in it, they will do so and it will go bankrupt. We can't trust government to manage our social security.
Never before has our country been in a crucial position economically as today. We have no choice but to reduce spending dramatically. It can be done. There's a number of things that can automatically be eliminated. Our politicians don't desire to do so because they have it made in Washington. They can leave Washington rich. They have all sorts of benefits being a Senator or Congressmen. They'll vote to spend to perpetuate their power. It must stop. That's why we need to vote out the incumbents this November in droves. We have no choice. China, Japan, and some other countries have been purchasing our bad debt. The other thing we're doing is allowing the Federal Reserve to continue printing money which is making the U.S. dollar worthless. We can't afford this kind of spending trend. We're head over heels in debt to China. If China decides to default on funding our toxic debt, the U.S. will collapse in a short period of time. We must rein in the national debt before it's too late.
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