Fiscal Incompetence or Selfishness?
By Andrew Zuelke
Let me be blunt: our nation is in serious financial trouble, and it’s worse than we have been told by our Democrat and Republican “leaders.”
At usdebtclock.org, there are several running counters tracking: the national debt, US Gross Domestic Product, population, defense, and more recently, the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E). When you go to the site, hover your computer cursor over any of these counters, and a pop-up box will appear, listing sources like the US Treasury, Congressional Budget Office, the IRS, etc.
As of the time of this writing, here are some raw numbers from the web site in dollars, rounded out for simplicity:
- US National Debt – $37 trillion
- US Federal Tax Revenue – $5 trillion
- US Federal Spending – $7 trillion
- US Debt Held by Foreign Countries – $9 trillion
- US Federal Debt to GDP Ratio – 123.40% (in 1960 it was 52.46%)
Here is the most disturbing number, the number Congressional Democrats and Republicans do not mention.
- US Total Debt – $106 trillion dollars. This number covers the Unfunded Debt/Interest, the unfunded liabilities.
Our national debt, which has been accumulating for over forty years, brings us to one inescapable conclusion: our elected federal Congressmen and Presidents (who have been either Democrats and Republicans) past and present are either fiscally incompetent or they are selfish. It is one or the other…or worse, both. It is absurd to rack up that much debt and not be one or the other.
If I say to Democrats and Republicans who allowed this debt to accrue that you are fiscally incompetent, they will immediately say, “No, we are not. Our parties’ officials are the stewards and the protectors of hard-working Americans’ money. Only our two parties can handle America’s huge financial decisions.” Ok, then Democrats and Republicans are selfish, spending up future generation’s money for their short-term benefit to buy votes and stay in power. Both parties will immediately say, ‘We are not selfish. We all ran for office to serve the American people. We sacrifice for our constituents every day.”
If someone is driving down the road and his car stalls on the railroad tracks, the driver has a responsibility to 1) get help moving/towing his car off the tracks and 2) to contact the authorities and/or the railroad to warn them of the risk to oncoming trains. One of the driver’s choices should never be to leave the car on the tracks and sue the railroad company if the train engineer hits and totals the car.
In other words, choices one and two are our elected officials (the car drivers) taking responsibility for the car (our tax dollars and national budget), and not leaving the car sit on the tracks for the railroad company and engineer (future generations of taxpayers) to deal with.
It does not work for the driver to say, “How was I supposed to know a train was coming?” Unless it was an inactive rail line, he knew a train would be coming sooner or later. That is common sense. Democrats, Republicans it does not work for your parties’ elected officials to say, “The debt was a simple mistake. How could we possibly have known that spending more than we brought in year after year, decade after decade would cause the debt to grow this large?”
When someone locks their keys in their house, that is a mistake (I have done that). Someone is driving too fast on an ice-covered road and goes into the ditch; one could argue that was a mistake. When someone knows ahead of time that something is not ethical or moral to do and they go ahead and do that thing anyway, sorry, that is not a mistake or an unavoidable accident.
In other words, both Democrats and Republicans, are both:
- Fiscally irresponsible – They saw this debt train barreling towards the stalled car. Their own “Yea!” votes in Congress caused the debt to grow.
- Selfish – They knew funding many of the entitlement programs and excess military funding beyond what we brough in for revenue would rack up massive debt and they kept deficit spending anyway.
If the Constitution Party had no other argument against the Democratic and Republican parties staying in power, the national debt is the only argument we need.
Both major parties will say they must deficit spend because millions of Americans rely on entitlement and other federal programs. I say that a bankrupt nation cannot help anyone. If our economy collapses from this massive debt, there is a run on the banks, and hyper-inflation, there will be no monies to fund anything. America will be broken from within and unable to defend itself from enemies without.
This is the story of nations and empires throughout history which debased their currency (before paper money, nations debased their coinage by mixing lesser metals like tin and copper into their gold and silver coins). The laws of economics do not stop at America’s borders. The financial irresponsibility, corruption and over-regulation from growing bureaucracies which brought down other civilizations can and will bring down America. The fact that our economy has not collapsed yet does not mean it never will. Sooner or later, the spending gala will be over, and it will be time to pay the overdue bill.
Andrew Zuelke is the Chairman of the Constitution Party of Wisconsin
Email Andrew at chairman@constitutionpartyofwisconsin.com
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