The Debt Is Bad -- And the Left Says ...?

We are about $20 trillion in debt right now.  By "we", I mean the American taxpayer, at the mercy of the people we elect and send to Washington.  Of course, "we" aren't the only ones who send those people to Washington; around 45% of Americans pay no income tax at all, but they still have the same vote that people who do pay taxes have.  I suppose that's OK.

It is really hard not to invoke Mitt Romney here, but you pretty much have to.  I know "national debates" are impossible, but there has to be some form of discussion in regard to the reality that if 150 million people voted in the last presidential election, about 70 million of them can be assumed to pay nothing in income taxes, and are sending representatives to Washington with a personal interest in protecting their situation.

Let me put a caveat in there.  Among those are retired Americans who have worked and paid taxes for their working lives, and are living on incomes too low to tax, but whose income through their career was heavily taxed and subject to Social Security (FICA) taxing at the time as well.  They did their part and they should not take any of this as pejorative toward them.

But let me refocus.

That debt is insanely large and is increasing every second.  Worse yet, it is owed to a number of foreign entities that we are not particularly friendly to us -- Mr. Romney famously noted that any item in the Federal budget needed to be subjected to the question "Is this important enough to borrow money from China to pay for it?".

It is grossly unhealthy to negotiate with China when we owe them $1.15 trillion, the single largest foreign debt-holder.  They can call that tomorrow and foul our economy beyond belief.  When we need China's help with the Fat Panda in Charge in North Korea, do you think it compromises our position just a little when they can play the debt card?

Conservatism teaches balanced budgets.  On a local level, it is significant how many states legally, or even constitutionally, mandate balanced budgets (45 of them).  States are closer to the notion of personal responsibility, and accordingly are fiscally more conservative.  Oh yeah, and they also cannot print money.  Gee, that may be why the vast majority of states vote Republicans into state houses and governorships.

But even the Democrats have to concede that to some extent, debt is a bad thing.  Spending beyond your means is a bad thing.  And being $20 trillion in debt is really a bad thing.  So what do they propose?  After all, while there is plenty of blame to go around, their hero, Barack Obama, effectively signed off on the doubling of that debt over his two terms.

What do they propose?  They don't have solutions for very much; nothing for immigration beyond open borders; nothing for the crime-ravaged cities at all; nothing for ISIS except stuffing more refugees into our neighborhoods regardless of their intent to bomb us; nothing for the economy except "taxing the 'rich' more"; nothing for health insurance except an utterly unaffordable single-payer concept.

The debt is horrible and a huge risk.  And you can't tax the "rich" for very long -- you could seize Bill Gates's entire asset base and pay for about five days of Federal spending, after which Gates is broke and Washington is still eating about $10 billion a day -- but only taking in enough to pay for maybe 75% of it.  You could move on to Warren Buffett then, and maybe get four more days.

Eventually -- pretty quickly, actually -- you run out of people's money, and the government is still chewing up $10 billion or so every day.  At what point do we decide that maybe we need to figure out how much tax revenue we can legitimately raise without stifling the economy or seizing property, and start figuring out how to spend only that much?

I will tell you that I firmly believe it to be an offense of any government that feels it should confiscate more than 25% of anyone's income in taxes.  It is an offense of the left that not one time will they answer the question as to what they think constitutes a maximum rate.

It is one thing for the left to have an innate belief that all property belongs to the government and we only get to "use" it at their discretion.  That's effectively the socialist mentality, but even the Democrats leading their party in Congress (and the previous president) seem to share that notion.

It's quite another to fail to address the burgeoning debt as a historic national risk, no less, in my opinion, than an invasion of our country.  The left brings no evident, workable solution to this problem and seems to refuse to speak to it.  But I want to hear what they say.  I want Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or Elizabeth Warren to stand up in a press conference and get asked specifically what they propose to do to cut the national debt by balancing the budget and paying down principal.

I want one honest reporter to ask that.  Because I want to know what they propose.  And why they think it would work.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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