Washington's Latest Capitulation

I had a picture of a drunken sailor here, but a retired senior naval officer found it offensive so I took it off of here. If any of you found it offensive or insensitive, I apologize. I mean that. Then again, I better never ever ever hear any jokes coming out of your mouths about morticians or lawyers. LOL Later- CMS

Amidst all the back slapping occurring in Washington D.C. and all the champagne bottles that are probably uncorked as we speak,a bloated elephant remains in the middle of the room; that being the 14.3 TRILLION DOLLAR DEBT.



All the chattering class, all the media, and all the politicians focus their attention on deficit reduction as though it is the ultimate goal. This is analogous to giving chemotherapy to a terminally afflicted patient to reduce an otherwise treatable tumor without actually removing it.


In 2009 our Gross Domestic Product was 14.12 dollars.





The Gross Domestic Product is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources. (Source- World Bank) Simply put, it is all the clothing, food, shelter, transportation, and anything else of value, plus taxes placed on it by the government minus and money the government might contribute toward producing these things or services of value.

Now, what does all this mean? It means that all of the sudden we actually decided to do something about the National Debt, if we wanted to pay it off in only one year, every single Man, Woman, and Child would have to go without ANYTHING of value during that time. I do not know about you, but frankly, I like my heat, clothing and some oatmeal at breakfast. Further, I would prefer some clothing to wear, and if you ever saw me naked, you would prefer that as well. Since I do not own a rickshaw, Ben's bicycle cart that attaches on the back of my ten-speed would be the only way for the kids and I to get anywhere, not that I could spend any money or use anything of value once we arrived.

Even harder to contemplate is the fact those chugging water from the Potomac, and apparently fiscally drunk on its heady fumes, have created a 50 thousand dollar debt on behalf of every Man, Woman and Child in this country. Since Maya, Ben and Chas, my children, think their life is as rough as sandpaper whenever they have to do chores, (Ben's words, not mine), it is highly unlikely they would be able to help much when it comes to paying down their share of the debt. Further, there are a few people I know who are either in a nursing home or living at care facilities for the developmentally disabled. Unless Dickensian work houses come back in vogue, they will not be much help on repaying the debt, either. So what does this all mean? That if you take away all those who are living either off other taxpayers, or the government, that every taxpayer owes $129 THOUSAND DOLLARS to either the Chinese, Arabs or whoever else holds our treasury notes. (This is without accrued interest thrown in, either.) Source- U.S. Debt Clock.

How did we get in this position? Well, for one, many people feel they are entitled to government services that they did not get in the past. When I was a small child, I can remember when Food Stamps first came out that their use generated hushed whispers in the lines at the grocery store. Today we live in morally relative world where I am okay and you are okay. Judging anyone's spendthrift ways or sloth is tantamount to cultural blasphemy and sacrilege of the worst stripe. People no longer save for the things they need or postpone buying them. They use credit cards instead of savings accounts.

I would really love to have a new Chevy Aveo. I could go out and get it tomorrow on credit and the dealer would gladly let me sign a contract to buy it because he wants his commission. With interest, that car, which is one of the most quickly depreciating assets you can purchase, will cost me somewhere between $250-300 a month. Frankly, I do not have that much extra cash and a simple purchase like this could put us into bankruptcy.

Some people have an eighty dollar a month cable package. They spend eighty to ninety dollar a month cellular telephone contract on top of their land line. They also have a forty to sixty dollar a month internet connection. Perhaps they eat out two or three times a week. They most likely keep their homes at seventy-two degrees in the winter and sixty-eighty in the summer, which I have never understood. Finally many people buy brand name groceries at the store and pay retail prices for clothing. They are the consumer generation and the target of every Madison Avenue advertiser and easy credit rip-off ever designed. Then they wonder why they are going broke or bankrupt.

What does our own personal consumerism have to do with the national debt? Well, it is simply the banality of evil and the desensitization of spending money like drunken sailors.


(This, President Reagan said, is an insult to drunken sailors.) When someone goes belly up, we all pay. When you see someone at the grocery store using an EBT card, you are buying their groceries. When you know someone is working under the table and not paying taxes, they are making you work longer into the year so you can pay their share, too. When you see a new government housing complex going up or a new school being built, that is a brick or a board that you cannot use on your own house. Say it with me, there is no such thing as a free lunch. We spend money we do not have and we do not care if our government does the same thing. We are bleeding ourselves dry by a thousand tiny cuts and both our individual households and the federal government is at the brink of an abyss, and if we fall, there will be no climbing out of it.

I for one, am too old to learn Mandarin or Arabic. Do you think after 9/11 if we were not so in debt to the Saudis or so dependent upon them that we would have let every member of the Saud family leave this country without any investigation immediately, despite all our airports being closed and all our planes grounded? Our intelligence agencies had a bead on Usama Bin Laden less than a few hours after the collapse of the towers. We had him on his telephone implicating himself and his role in their collapse. He is still on the loose. In China, they slaughter their own dissenters in the public square, practice censorship and persecution of the religious, and force abortions daily upon mothers. Despite these practices, we still allow them to buy our T-Notes and we buy their value added products, frequently created with our own raw capital. Our fiscal addiction is killing us and the monkey on our back is pressuring us into accepting the unacceptable.

Now, what do we do about it? Well, for one, keep your own finances in check and do not live on a champagne budget if all you can afford is Wiedemann Beer. Do not make the rest of us bail you out for bad credit risks you take that lead to higher prices for us all. Second, write your U.S. Representative and your Senator. Tell them that the only acceptable budget is a balanced one. Ending deficit spending is only a small first step toward righting the our ship's fiscal course. Unless we start eliminating the debt, and turn our ship into the storm, a tsunami comprised of debt will drowned us in the history pages like so many other civilizations before us. It is time we throw the Chinese Speaking Arab monkey off our backs, once and for all.