Editorial

As a kid, I remember Ronald Reagan bemoaning the size of the Federal debt.  It was approaching one trillion dollars.  He explained how a million dollars was a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills only three inches high, but, a trillion dollars was a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills that was over 47 miles high.  It was a shocking mental image.  Unfortunately, it did not stick.  Earlier this year, the Federal government passed a budget with a DEFICIT (not DEBT) of more than one trillion dollars.  If this was going to be a one-time thing, I might be able to live with it.  Unfortunately, it is not.  In the past, whenever a budget was passed with a deficit, there always seemed to be a promise that it would be better the following year, and better again the year after that, until we finally achieved a balanced budget.  This time, there was not such promise.  Instead, we are PLANNING to spend more money than we collect for at least the next ten years and we don’t have any idea what will happen after that.  Various politicians and economists claim that we need all of this spending (bailouts and stimulus packages) to get the economy going again.  We need it to create jobs and restore our standard of living so that everyone can have the latest gadgets and flat-screen TVs that are manufactured in other countries.  But, if we’re going to borrow all of this money and not pay it back any time soon, who is going to pay it back?  The answer is obvious, but, I don’t think enough people are thinking about it.

If I was having trouble making ends meet and I decided to raid my son’s savings account to buy MYSELF a flat-screen TV, people would not think much of me as a parent.  What kind of a parent would steal money from his children to buy things for himself?  Well, that’s EXACTLY what we are doing to ALL of our children.  We are stealing their future earnings to make things more comfortable for ourselves today.  What’s worse is that we are wasting a lot of that money on things we don’t even need.  We are repairing roads and bridges that don’t need to be repaired, buying airplanes for the military that the military did not request, and buying up older cars just to destroy them so that no one can use them.  We are spending money for the sake of spending money.  I used to get angry about the government wasting MY money.  Now, I’m horrified by the realization that all of the money I will ever pay in taxes is already gone and the government is now wasting my sons’ money.  All of our children can look forward to a lower standard of living because today’s government could not control spending.  None of us would dare let our minor children go wild with our credit cards.  Why do we think it is OK for us to go wild with theirs?

Congress is currently looking at raising the debt ceiling.  In other words, our children’s credit cards are already maxed out and we want more.  It’s simply wrong.  I would even say it is immoral.  Holding the line on the debt ceiling would surely be painful, but, I think it is pain that we should bear and not pass on to our children.  The next time the government sends me a “stimulus” check, it’s going straight into my sons’ savings accounts.  After all, it’s really their money.  It’s the least I can do.