What is the right response when someone suggests a course of action that you know to be harmful? If you’re wise, the proper response is “No,” of course.
But for too many years – decades even – there haven’t been nearly enough U.S. lawmakers and presidents who have said “No” to wasteful, unwise and even unconstitutional spending.
Instead, the answer has been a resounding “Yes” to all manner of spending – from expansion of entitlements to imposition of ObamaCare socialized medicine to growing farm subsidies to federal support for unpopular Amtrak rail service. Hardly anything is too big or too small to stake a claim to federal tax dollars, and calls for real reform are swiftly denounced.
The results today are painfully obvious. We have a $14.3 trillion national debt. We pay hundreds of billions of dollars in annual interest on the debt. Entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security are on a path to bankruptcy. Unemployment is high, and inflation is on the rise, reducing the purchasing power of the American people’s earnings.
Considering our nation’s unchecked spending and the problems that spending has caused, wouldn’t it be great if one (or both!) of the two major political parties were the “party of no”? That is to say, wouldn’t it make us an economically stronger nation if lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as the president, picked up the difficult but necessary habit of saying “No” whenever they were confronted with spending that is wasteful, ill-advised or unconstitutional?