Bipartisan Bankruptcy is Still Bankruptcy
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recently announced that Republican President Donald Trump agreed “in principle” to a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, but were vague about what would be purchased or how its expenditures would be paid.
Their hypothetical deal calls to mind the apocryphal “shovel-ready projects” of former-President Barack Obama’s failed pork-laden “stimulus” that, with accumulated interest, increased America’s national debt by $1.2 trillion.
Washington politicians have already mortgaged America’s future. In a few years, interest payments on our national debt will be the largest federal budgetary expenditure, more than defense or Social Security. Worse, debt service is an expenditure for which citizens receive exactly…nothing.
Washington has already borrowed more than $22 trillion of wealth taxpayers, including millions of unborn Americans, have yet to earn, and saddled future generations with debt our children and grandchildren may find impossible to repay.
The national debt represents generational theft on a grand scale, so Washington’s enormous debt obligation isn’t merely irresponsible, it’s immoral. Moreover, indebtedness threatens America’s future. Appallingly, forecasts already call for $trillions more.
Debt accumulation is not a Democrat versus Republican problem. The parties are complicit. Where spending is concerned, Washington is a one-party town.
History suggests that voters chose smaller government in 1980, 1994 and 2010, but history records that government didn’t shrink during the Reagan years, following the 1994 Republican tidal wave or the 2010 House tsunami. Government only grows, as it has for the past seventy years through every Democratic and Republican Congress and administration.
Washington is overrun with spending cap-busting political hacks who are eager to vote for budget resolutions that assume decades of deficits in the $trillions, but lack the courage to reduce debt or reform ballooning entitlements.
The United States may have the largest economy in the world, but America is not too big to fail. No one else has the resources to bail us out, so Americans must do it. Americans must act – and quickly. We must change how we think about government and about ourselves. Elected officials – Democrat and Republican alike – must step up and deal responsibly with the mess for which they and their predecessors are responsible. Voters must do their part by unseating those who refuse. Americans must hold elected officials accountable for their actions and be personally responsible as well.
Grassroots groups clearly had an impact on the 2010 General Election, but will other similarly-motivated activists across America have the interest, energy and staying power to keep an eye on politicians and hold them accountable for improving the quality of government? Does the civic and political will exist to make genuine changes, or must real reform await and follow national failure?
Time will tell, but time is not on our side. America’s national debt problem is urgent, even existential. If you imagine them to be too painful, remember, the longer Washington stalls, the more excruciating the necessary reforms will be.
An open-ended, unfunded Trump/Pelosi/Schumer infrastructure deal would only hasten the inevitable.
