It’s no mystery what would happen to you if you borrowed 40 cents of every dollar that you spent — and then you kept on spending: It wouldn’t be long before you were dead broke.
Then why is it that President Barack Obama, a majority in Congress — and a great many other Americans — don’t seem to realize that we as a nation are headed into disastrous economic trouble because Congress is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that the federal government spends, even as taxes are too high?
North Dakota Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad, a member of a bipartisan commission charged with trying to reduce our $13.7 trillion national debt, said on ABC’s “This Week”: “That’s utterly unsustainable. It can’t continue much longer, so it’s got to be dealt with.”
But alarmingly, it is still going on! It is not being dealt with!
Without a solution, Conrad said, the United States “will become a second-rate economic power.”
No American wants that. But are a majority of the members of Congress ready to make the hard spending cuts necessary to reduce our disastrous increases in debt? Certainly, the public in general does not want higher taxes.
Will we face the economic facts — and adopt real solutions — in time? If not, it’s no secret where we as a nation are headed.
Some of the things the federal commission has suggested to cut the deficit are not at all popular.
Those suggestions include reductions in domestic spending, cuts to military budgets, very gradually raising the age of eligibility for full Social Security benefits to 69, and ending popular tax provisions, such as one that allows mortgage interest payments to be deducted in income tax calculations. Who has other ideas for reducing irresponsible federal spending?
The problems of too much red ink are painfully clear. But the will to face them is lacking. So the problem is getting worse! And solutions will therefore be harder to come by.