Let Beijing Do It, Mr. President!

So now we hear that the president is going to give more aid to Kenya to help with "counter-terrorism" and security and that sort of thing.  We all think this is supposed to be a noble act on the part of Mr. Obama and a hat tip to his country of, at least, ethnic origin, at least on the side of the parent who didn't raise him.  Go figure.

So let us translate this to a "standard" household economy -- one, that is, which is spending every dollar that comes in, is unable to save a penny, and is currently running up balances on credit cards to pay for the spending which currently exceeds income.  In other words, pretty much the typical American household.

Now let's suppose that household decides to take on an additional expense, say, building a new deck.  Well, obviously it can't afford a new deck, since it is not bringing in enough money to pay for the things it already is spending on.  So the household will go to the bank and beg for a loan for a deck it already can't afford.

You have to think that's a pretty stupid thing to do.  I would agree with you; you might as well just let the bank build, pay for and keep the deck.  If you don't have the money, after all, you can't spend it unless you borrow it.

Unless, that is, you are the United States Government, particularly under the leadership of Barack Obama.  Since it can print all the money it wants, and can borrow as much as lapdog Congresses will raise the debt ceiling to allow it to, it can act without the least concern about where money will come from.

Back in the 2012 presidential debates, Mitt Romney famously -- or at least it should have been famously -- noted that when he became president, he would look at every spending line in every spending bill with the test of whether "it was important enough to borrow money from China to pay for it."  By that standard, of course, a whole lot of pork would fly out of Federal spending and we would have a balanced budget pretty darned quick.

So now every time Obama proposes -- or declares -- that we shall spend more on something, I apply the Romney China test to it.

In order to send money to Kenya to help in fighting counter-terrorism, we have to go hat in hand to Beijing to borrow the money.  Imagine that -- to fight the exact kind of thing that China is already doing to us, we have to borrow money from them and then send it to Kenya.

Really?

Why don't we simply go hat in hand to Beijing and ask them to help Kenya with counter-terrorism and get the heck out of the way?  After all, we appear to be only the middleman, and we end up paying the interest to China so Kenya can do whatever it is going to do with the money -- and this is Kenya we're talking about; we really think we're going to account for that money when we can't even account for the money from Obama's stimulus?

If we really want to address the problem in Kenya, whatever that might be, how about we just do what is needed a lot cheaper -- with American troops, American agents, American intelligence services, and do it with the agreed cooperation of the Kenyan government but under our orders.  After all, if Kenya wants to accomplish something, and we're the best at it, and we would have to borrow money from our enemies to accomplish it, then at least let's spend less and do it ourselves.

Look, I'm not a counter-terrorism expert.  I don't have a clue how that money would have to be spent and I feel comfortable thinking that we would spend it better than Kenya would, at least in the interest of the United States.

I am also, however, reasonably well-versed in bookkeeping.  I know first-hand the impact of being unable to bring in enough revenue to pay for committed obligations.  It grinds at me that we have a government in Washington that doesn't seem to care a whit that we have spent $20 trillion more than we have brought in, half of all of it during the current administration.  It grinds at me that we are ceding control of our economy to our enemies in China, by insisting on spending money we don't have and have to borrow it -- from them.

Now, I have a knee-jerk reaction whenever I see a headline that starts with "Obama to spend ....".  That reaction, thanks to Mr. Romney, is "Is it worth borrowing it from China?".  It's about time that we consider just asking China to do themselves whatever we're borrowing the money to do.  Let them have it.  Then if someone goes bankrupt, it's just as likely to be Beijing, maybe even before Washington.

I could live with that.  Probably won't bother Kenya either way.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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