
“It” happened last Friday morning. “It” was actually something that is more serious than inflation. It’s more serious than immigration reform (that’s saying a LOT coming from me!), and it’s more serious than fixing the southern border.
“It” is the debt ceiling.
And in case you missed it, the federal government hit the latest debt ceiling of $31.4 trillion. That means that technically, the US Government can’t be spending any more money, or at the very least incurring any more debt. Now, since we are borrowing money just to pay the interest on the $31.4 trillion that’s out there in debt, you have to realize that unless some shenanigans are pulled, we are going to be defaulting on the debt.
That has never happened.
But this time, I think there is the possibility, even though Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell says it won’t. Mitch isn’t in the House, where Republicans are holding the line on increasing the debt ceiling. Democrats would love nothing better than to do away with the debt ceiling all together. And Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen is trying her best to play games with the debt so that the government can continue to function…at least until June. After that, it all gets shut down. And of course, the White House is refusing to negotiate on the debt ceiling. They want a “clean bill” meaning it only deals with raising the debt ceiling. It doesn’t cut spending or put any limits on the government’s programs.
Now, I am not a fan of defaulting on debt of any kind. I pay my bills, and my debt, and the US Government should be no different. But it has to be done with something I don’t think we’ve seen from the US Government in a very long time. It has to be done with responsibility. And as always, I have a way around this.
First and foremost, the government needs to go through each and every item in the current budget, and carve out every single thing that doesn’t do one of three things. It needs to uphold previous promises made to the American public (so Social Security and Medicare are safe for seniors…but that doesn’t mean you can’t save money from it). All social programs like welfare, federal unemployment, needs to be examined and possibly cut. That will save some money, but not enough.
Next you need to look at the spurious grants that are given out to universities and colleges to do “research”. Do we really need to know about the sex life of the yellow-breasted tit willow? Probably not. We waste a lot of money each year on such studies, and frankly, they could probably get corporations to come to bat for them instead. Then we need to look at all of the money we are spending on foreign aid. It’s not that much, really. Last year, we spent a grand total of $47.2 billion on foreign aid. But every little bit helps.
After we’ve pared a bunch from the current budget, we need to focus spending on a few critical areas. The government needs to maintain an army. The government needs to maintain infrastructure. And the government needs to maintain a money supply. Other than that, governments have a tendency to get involved with a lot of stuff they don’t need to do, or that businesses can do more efficiently. The rest needs to go. That means if you don’t fall into one of those categories, we can slice it from the budget and get rid of the department or agency that oversees it. That in and of itself will save trillions!
Now we come to what will be the hard part. You cannot spend any more money on anything other than those three areas, unless you first take money away from a program that spends an equal amount. So, if you want to study the yellow breasted tit willow, fine. Just figure out a program you want to cut. And we get rid of the ever increasing budget items. No longer do things continue to grow each year because of inflation. Every three to five years, anyone getting federal money for a program needs to put together their reason why they need to keep getting money. It’s that simple.
I didn’t say this wouldn’t be painful. It will be. It’ll hurt worse than pretty much anything we’ve ever gone through including the Great Depression. But do you want to pony up the $94,000 per person that the Congress has put us into debt over? That’s why you owe. If you have a family of four, it’s almost $400,000 you need to pay to get rid of the debt. It’s out of control. And we can’t keep spending like that.
So, until we get the budget under control, and until we cut most of the social programs out there, we don’t increase the debt ceiling. Maybe that means we default short-term. But get the house in order first. That’s the important thing. And one more thing we need to do…pass a balanced budget amendment so we don’t ever have to find ourselves in this mess ever again. It’s only common sense!
Carry on world…you’re dismissed!
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