© 2009 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
“It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.” – Oscar Wilde
Sen. Everett Dirksen’s quip, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money,” has been changed in Washington from billion to trillion. Years earlier the quip used the word million. A trillion is as easy to say as a million, but is a million times harder to repay.
Our country’s fiscal policies allow debt of unfathomable magnitude without any repayment plan. In the last 50 years, politicians from both political parties have dramatically increased the national debt with no dialog or plan on what is most problematic for our nation — how the debt is to be retired.
Everyone is acting as if the national debt is not there. Economists say that the debt really does not matter and make other harmful statements. The media has no clue since it does not report on it. Are we going to repay our national debt at some point or not?
Occasionally we hear talk about balancing the budget, but it is a sham. Balance would be nice, but what about paying back debt already incurred? There is the saying, “When you are in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.”
Even worse, the government keeps most of its debt “off books.” The total indebtedness of our country is not the declared $10 trillion — rather, is about $110 trillion. Most of that is from programs like Social Security, which takes a portion of worker’s pay each year and does not save any of it. Rather, each year there is an IOU saying, “When Michael Swickard reaches the age when benefits are due, TAX THAT GENERATION for his benefits.”
Our total gross domestic product is about $14 trillion a year, which means if we took every dollar produced in our country and used it solely to retire the national debt, it would take almost 10 years with none of the money being used for anything else. Obviously, we cannot do that. The debt is a giant Ponzi scheme that will be discovered at some point. What then?
The day of reckoning is coming
When I talk to a banker about increasing my personal debt, the first thing we work out is whether I can afford to pay the debt back and, specifically, how this will happen. The check is not written until the method of paying back the debt is assured.
There is a day of reckoning that will be profoundly distasteful for our entire country. It is coming and there is nothing now that we can do other than to try to make that moment not as painful as it will be if we continue our irresponsible ways. P. J. O’Rourke wrote, “The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.”
For politicians, there is always an “emergency” requiring us to go further into national debt, since they buy our votes with promises. Every year we go “whole hog” into the pork. We always find reasons to borrow on our children’s and their children’s futures. Currently there is the stimulus bill laden with pork, which resembles a stimulus like jelly beans resemble pinto beans — by sight but not substance.
The real pain of this situation may occur after I have passed on, as it probably will occur long after the politicians who got us into it have all passed on. That will be of little solace for those left with the problem. Most young people do not see it coming and will be terribly upset.
Thomas Jefferson warned, “It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it.” Who in this nation’s leadership stands ready to repair this wrong? We must have a serious dialog with Congress about its plan for repaying the national debt while at least some of these perpetrators of this vile outrage are still alive.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.