A generation ago, the national debt stood at just a smidgen over USD $4 trillion and a young presidential candidate named Bill Clinton was discussing a great plan he had to have it entirely paid off by now. Oops. The national debt is now 5.5 times bigger.
More than anything, this astoundingly bad public policy is the fault of Barack Obama, undoubtedly the most irresponsible president in our history…who added on more to the national debt than all other presidents combined in an orgy of Washington, DC, debauchery that saw the size of the federal government mushroom while hundreds of thousands of new bureaucrats were added to federal payrolls, and Washington, DC, housing prices skyrocketed as federal government employees and private industry sub-contractors paid for by the government reveled in their six-figure paychecks and outrageously lavish healthcare and pension plans… all paid for by us, the taxpayers.
Obama’s stewardship of our national finances was truly obscene, but George W. Bush was nearly as bad. He has even less of an excuse, in fact, because he had a Republican Congress to work with for most of his eight years. During that time, Bush took us from USD $5.8 trillion to USD $10 trillion, something that seemed reckless at the time. Of course, in light of the Obama USD $10 trillion spending extravaganza, Bush looks prudent by comparison.
How is it that we supposedly elect the best and the brightest to represent us in Washington, DC,…people with law and medical degrees and MBAs from Ivy League universities, people that come from the finest law practices and accounting firms and consultancies and banks and financial institutions in the country…and our end result is the debt avalanche we now have before us?
Why do we believe politicians of either party when they tell us that they will make our national debt a top priority?
Why is it that the American people seem to fail to understand how ruinous our national debt truly is and what an astounding percent of our national budget we are now spending on servicing that debt?
Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has penned an op-ed which presents some eye-opening statistics as to just how bad our national debt really is. By next year, the cost of servicing the national debt (paying interest on it), will exceed the cost of Medicare. By 2025, it will exceed the cost of our military spending, making it the most expensive item in our entire national budget!
Quite simply… we have arrived at this point by spending infinitely more than we collect in tax revenue, mainly on things that have no mention in the Constitution as being a function of the federal government.
Public sector unions, and the millions of workers and hundreds of millions of dollars that they spend every year to support the Democratic Party, play a fundamental role in not only our ruinous levels of federal debt but the debt crisis facing our state and local governments as well.
Nothing is more ruinous to our future than the ever-increasing demands of government employees… specifically public sector union employees such as those at AFSCME and the SEIU. They live like kings and queens on the backs of actual working-class people… all the while donating hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democratic Party to ensure that their six- and seven-figure paychecks never run dry.
But it is not merely their salaries and the fact that government employees rarely, if ever, get fired. It’s the highly lucrative nature of their healthcare and pension plans… plans to which they contribute far less than their private sector counterparts.
For states, these plans have proved a bitter pill to swallow, and have led to the greatest fiscal crisis in the United States that you have most likely never heard about: unfunded pension liabilities. When you drill down into the details, it is almost impossible to believe that the situation is true. Essentially, states promise outrageously generous pensions to state employees (who, of course, rally to support whichever candidate promises them the most money), and then fail to fund those very plans… kicking the can down the road to future administrations and generations.
Once the global debt bomb explodes, there won’t be much left for anyone. Governments will fall, individuals will be impoverished, and businesses will implode. The elitists in power have tried to keep everyone in the dark, but maybe there’s an answer to this devastation.
Global debt now stands at a terrifying $243 trillion according to a report by the Institute of International Finance this week. That’s quarter of a quadrillion. We’re in the realms of the absurd and the unsustainable. That’s money that will never be repaid. The debt-based system is irrevocably broken and is still propped up by the lies told by central bankers and governments in order to remain in positions of power over others.
The record debt figure stands at three-times the world’s total gross domestic product (GDP). In other words, it’s three times larger than the value of all products and services on the planet. And the United States is contributing massively to this problem, propping up a debt bubble that will crush everyone when it finally bursts. It’s pretty safe to say that if you aren’t concerned, you simply aren’t paying attention and will be hurt when it all collapses.
An irresponsible monetary system addicted to printing money and issuing credit is destroying the standard of living almost everywhere on the planet.
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