As Christmas approaches, we as individuals may tend to ignore our financial limitations and splurge a little in our spending. We want to buy wonderful presents for our children and other members of the family, and perhaps help some people who are not so fortunate as we are.
Oh, well, we rationalize, we’ll face the bills after the holidays are over.
That is not good financial planning. But, after all, Christmas comes just once a year.
But on the national level – affecting all of us as taxpayers – our irresponsible spending doesn’t come just at Christmas, but is running wild all year around. The result: terrible financial results that eventually must be faced.
We as a nation already have piled up debt of $13.9 trillion! And we’re adding to it – about $4 billion a day! Of course, we have to pay interest on it!
When we talk in such huge dollar terms, the debt may not seem “personal.” But it means that each one of us owes more than $44,000 as our personal share of the national debt.
But that’s not the worst news: President Barack Obama’s spending plans will add $10 trillion – or more – to our national debt over the next 10 years! (You can bet it’ll be much more.)
We admit that these figures are so big, and that future spending is so unpredictable, that they may be far off. But the “conservative” estimate is that our national debt likely will grow to $20 trillion by 2020. That would have each family owing about $170,000 in national debt, plus interest!
It’s not that our taxes are “too low.” It’s that spending is “too high.”
You may remember that during the Cold War years, national defense spending was blamed for our growing debt. But while we still spend a lot on defense, the big spending growth these days is for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – plus interest on our huge national debt.
This growing spending is putting a greater burden on our economy and mortgaging our future.
But do we see the president and a majority of the members of Congress calling for reasonable financial restraint, to avoid higher taxes, to avoid bigger debt and to avoid having to pay lots more in interest?
We may splurge a little bit at Christmas, and plan to pay our debt during the rest of the year. But Uncle Sam is not Santa Claus, who works all year to make toys for Christmas. Instead our federal government is spending wildly all year, with no pause to “catch up” and pay.
That’s why we’ll face the new year with greater debt, which will be a heavy drag on our economy, making it more difficult for us all to have a happy and prosperous new year.