Debt Bomb Anybody?

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the Department of Commerce, U.S. national debt officially exceeded gross domestic product on December 20, 2011. Translation: We are spending more than we are producing. You might be wondering what that means. Let me give you a hint. It’s not good. This is bad news for the future of our republic. To make matters worse, there is a man in the White House who continues to run up deficits with utter disregard for the consequences of his actions; saddling future generations with mountains of debt while vastly increasing the welfare state to unfathomable levels. Whether you wish to believe he is managing our decline intentionally or that he is genuinely doubling down on Keynesian economics in the hopes of creating growth is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that we are racing toward the cliff’s edge with no signs of a slow-down. Last year, the Wall Street Journal estimated that one out of seven Americans was receiving food stamps and we finished the year with roughly 45 million people on the government dole (nearly 15% of the population). From January 2009 to May of 2011, approximately 14 million people began collecting food stamps. To be fair, the numbers were up under Bush, but unlike our Dear Leader, Bush wasn’t promoting new enrollees via government policy. Obama has encouraged the increase. Congratulations, Mr. President. To paraphrase your now infamous 2008 campaign quote…”When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” I guess that would depend on who you talk to. The great Margaret Thatcher said it best and I would offer this as a rebuttal: “The problem with socialism is that at some point you run out of other people’s money.” 

She was right. The slow creep of socialism into our society over the past 100 years has proven to be disastrous. FDR’s policies during the 1930’s got the ball rolling and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” continued to grow the welfare monolith that is now literally causing our national bankruptcy. We’ve run out of money and all the while our president continues his war on the middle class – the very people who fund the welfare state he has succeeded in growing. Our unfunded liabilities account for over 114 trillion and there’s no way this is going to end well. With a population of over 300 million people, there has to be some growth – and there isn’t any. Our middle class is shrinking while government continues to swell up like a balloon. The economy is stagnant and private sector growth is abysmal, but we’ve been told continuously since 2009, by the administration and their friends in the media, that the recession is over and that we are in a recovery. In the third quarter of 2011, GDP was up a whopping 1.8% from the previous quarter. Now that’s what I call a bustling economy.

We need serious rollback of the entitlement/welfare state and government as a whole needs to be chopped down to size. The only problem is that any politician who actually talks about doing this is considered “fringe” or “right-wing”. It’s preposterous to equate advocates of limited government with extremism. But this is the world we live in and this is what the lexicon now allows for. Politicians or citizens who call for an end to the massive spending, who call for small and limited government – as laid out by the Founders – are said to be kooks. The leftist apparatchiks disguised as journalists at MSNBC and CNN would have us believe that we are in the minority and that this strand of thought is not mainstream. They are wrong. The elitist intelligentsia of Washington D.C., along with their friends in the media, represent the minority of thinking and more Americans are waking up to the harsh realities of our plight every single day.

Paying our way out of this is not a viable option and we definitely aren’t going to spend our way out of it – contrary to the popularly-held beliefs of our president and Senate Democrats. We’re staring economic calamity in the face and there aren’t many people in Washington who are offering real solutions. The national debt per capita is nearing $50,000 and too few of our elected officials on Capitol Hill are willing to point that out. Democrats continue searching for their non-existent utopia by way of pushing their agenda that nobody wants while establishment Republicans in Washington and the liberal press corps shout down or blatantly ignore anyone who offers a real plan for reform. See Michelle Bachmann. See Jim DeMint. See Paul Ryan.

Our economic problems are bigger than Barack Obama and will still exist whether he is residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or not. He is undoubtedly the main catalyst in our current march toward economic armageddon, but his political defeat will only offer temporary relief for the country. Until our leaders in government get serious about real reform, we will continue toward the precipice – even with a Republican in the White House. The greatest nation to ever exist in the history of all humanity is in grave danger of being relegated to the history books right next to the page describing the fall of the Roman Empire. But fear not, the tide can be rolled back if we intend to get serious as a nation. If I may quote the Iron Lady once more. “Marxists get up early to further their cause. We must get up even earlier to defend our freedom.”