President Barack Obama has said repeatedly that what the United States needs to get the economy back on track is more government spending. Besides the original $862 billion “stimulus” that he supported, he wants Congress to pass an additional $50 billion stimulus. He says that new spending will jump-start our economy – even though the first stimulus did nothing of the sort and added massively to our dangerously high national debt.
Interestingly, fellow liberal Democrat Hillary Clinton, our secretary of state, has stepped forward to say that the debt the United States is accumulating is actually a national security threat.
“The United States must be strong at home in order to be strong abroad,” Clinton said recently, according to Reuters news service. “We cannot sustain this level of deficit financing and debt without losing our influence, without being constrained in the tough decisions we have to make.”
She said the United States should “make the national security case about reducing the deficit and getting the debt under control.”
She was careful not to criticize the president directly. Nevertheless, her take on the crippling national debt is decidedly different from the president’s. His solution to every economic problem seems to be to spend more.
Certainly no one can reasonably claim that Clinton is fiscally “conservative.” But even she seems to acknowledge what the president is unwilling to admit: that outrageously high national debt is weakening the United States.
Alas, until the president himself and the Democrats in control of Congress also acknowledge that America must begin living within its means, there is not likely to be much improvement in our nation’s fiscal policy.