By Robert Carbery
America’s massive $20.5 trillion debt will never go down if the federal government continues spending at the rate it has been over recent decades. No amount of tax increases will close the gap between what our government takes in and what we spend on our ridiculously bloated bureaucracy in Washington DC. We need true spending cuts and a reeling in of big government once and for all.
But will that ever happen?
Some have declared that Congressional Republicans’ tax plan to cut taxes and increase budget deficits will grow the national debt to almost the size of the entire U.S. economy in ten years. An alarming statistic, if true. Does that mean we will finally cut entitlements in a meaningful manner to coincide with the tax cuts putting more money in the pockets of businesses and therefore employees and families?
Not likely.
Though House Speaker Paul Ryan and Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady are already coming out and stating that entitlement reform is next, the GOP always caves and says what they need to in order to get reelected while enacting no lasting change in DC that would improve the wellbeing of the rest of the country. The rise in debt will never be reversed if the spineless politicians in our nation’s capital do nothing to tackle our out of control entitlement spending on countless and ineffective programs.
Sure, it is likely political suicide to fuss with Medicare and Social Security that affects elderly voters who actually show up to vote for the GOP. However, if anything is to be done about the debt and if these programs are to last until I reach retirement age, then they must be upended and drastically reformed and put on a sustainable path.
Amazingly, President Trump has already put these two massive programs into the off limits program. The Trump administration is tackling and are aiming to tackle big ticket items such as rolling back job-killing regulation, enacting tax cuts/tax reform, and investing in American infrastructure. However, reforming “welfare” needs to be on the agenda, as Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn recently stated.
But with Trump, far from a fiscal conservative, at the helm and spineless Republicans in power until 2018, nothing will be done. They will tell us after the next election. Then after that election, it will be after the next election. And on and on the can is kicked down the road that we have been on for far too long.
If Trump really wants to make a change in Washington, he would honestly tackle the debt and stop this ruse that we are on any kind of solid fiscal ground. If only Americans actually cared about tackling our irresponsible spending. Too bad we only care about getting “more stuff” from our nanny, the federal government.
But, if things go as they have, Trump will serve eight terms in office and will get us to annual trillion dollar budget deficits and a historically high debt burden. Then, when a Democrat President takes control, what do you think will happen?
The Damn Debt That Will Never Go Down
Views:
We’re doomed, like the Romans were. When the providers of free stuff are no longer able to tax and borrow enough to buy the votes to keep them in power, a strongman (woman, transer, etc) will arise who’ll, at first, buy the support of the government-dependent with the confiscated property of the more-well-off minority, but he’ll (she’ll, it’ll) eventually just confiscate property and claim and keep it.
(and, editor, you may have intended “years”, instead of “terms”)
The debt cannot actually shrink while the Federal Reserve exists. The way the whole system works is the Federal Reserve prints money and loans it out at interest — by definition, there will always be more debt than money to pay it with (so seconds after being started, the Federal Reserve prints $10 and wants $11 back — where does the additional $1 come from, if not from the Federal Reserve printing it and thereby generating more debt)?