Plugging The Spill
The spill continues. All efforts to stop it, to cap the leak have failed. The folks we elected have been no help, in fact, they continue to make matters worse.
I’m not talking about the oil leak from British Petroleum’s well in the Gulf of Mexico. That leak, at least, seems to be yielding to the best minds in the business. After three months of gushing oil, the flow seems to have been nearly completely stopped. The relief well is ahead of schedule and by this time next month the well may be permanently sealed at last. I am talking about a far worse leak. A full fledged gusher that is day by day doing far more damage to our nation than the gulf oil spill.
I am talking about the flood of red ink gushing out of Washington. The deficit spending continues unabated. Congress seems totally unwilling to consider the debt they are leaving our children. They care not at all that they are hurtling the nation to total, complete, financial collapse. They continue to spend on every half-baked idea the left has ever cooked up. Worse, they continue to expand the number government agencies, government employees, and government rules. All of this only promises worse growth of spending in the future.
No government program ever costs less than they predict. No government program ever does its job and works itself out of business. Once established, they cost more than predicted, are grown with new add-ons, hire more people, and continue to expand until their cost is several times the original, quoted, “lie to the public to get their support” cost. My first political science professor told us on day one of class that the first job of every bureaucrat was to expand their bureaucracy. Boy was he right.
As I write this, the U. S. National Debt Clock shows our national debt to be over $13 Trillion. To be exact, $13,211,888,000,000. That is close as I can get. In the time it took to write the last sentence another $1 Million was added. This is money our kids and grandkids will work their entire lives to pay back. Worse, our ability to borrow this money will soon cause us to be unable to borrow more unless we are willing to pay higher and higher interest rates. The United States of America is like a family living on credit cards and the cards are almost tapped out. Economic collapse, total collapse, riots in the streets collapse, is looming.
Our profligate spending and endless expansion of government power and growth has reached the critical point. Cutting discretionary spending is useless. There simply isn’t enough of it to matter. We could totally eliminate all national security spending and it wouldn’t stop the growth in the national debt. We have grown too many entitlement programs doing too many things that the government shouldn’t be doing. The only hope for salvation is to reform these programs. To structure them so they devolve to non-existence.
The Founding Fathers did not create a government to do all things for all people. They did just the opposite. They understood that government, allowed to grow to do that which people should do for themselves, would become a threat to the people’s freedom and the orderly business of the people. Can there now be any doubt they were right?
Unless this is checked. Unless government power, control, and size is slashed radically, it will come crashing down. The type of economic collapse that is headed our way will be so complete that society will unravel. You already see glimmers of it in Europe. Such a situation begs the government to sieze more power. Americans, with an almost genetic predisposition towards liberty, will rebel. This level of spending promises to lead to a second civil war.
America, the choice is stark and needs to be made now. If we don’t make it now, all is lost. The clock is ticking. In the time it took to finish this column another $55 Million was added to the national debt.
