Nine Reasons We Need to Solve Our Debt Problems Now! While We Can!!

This morning, I had a chance meeting with Senator Mike Lee of Utah.
At age 42, he hasn’t been corrupted by the ways of Washington yet. In fact, Senator Lee stayed up all night helping Texas senator Ted Cruz strip Obamacare from the Senate continuing resolution (CR).
But in the end, they failed. They weren’t able to overcome the legislative willpower of Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Senator Lee admitted, “It has been a tough week.” He complained that the media wasn’t covering the controversy fairly and said, “I am from the reddest state in America, and even in Utah the media is liberal.”
Now that Reid has secured exemption from Obamacare for himself and his Senate staff and colleagues, he’s all in for subjecting the little people to the Affordable Care Act.
The Senate has approved a CR that includes Obamacare funding, and now the action has turned to the House of Representatives. The leaders of the House are still holding the line against Obamacare, and Obama is still unwilling to negotiate. The impasse will likely result in a temporary shutdown of non-essential government services.
There are a number of things you should know about this temporary shutdown. Government shutdowns don’t usually last long, and they rarely have long-term effects. They can be a nuisance if you planned a vacation to a national park, but once the backlog of visa applications is caught up, few people will feel much pain.
The worst part will be listening to both parties bluster and pontificate on Capitol Hill. The screeching and fearmongering is unbearable. Our representatives are unwilling to solve problems rationally, and so they govern from crisis to crisis. Few are willing to recognize that the debt and spending problems must be dealt with, and I applaud efforts to solve it now. With that in mind, let’s revisit the fundamental causes of our problem…

• Our debt-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio is anywhere between 103% and 202%, depending which off-budget programs are counted. This means our debt exceeds the size of our entire economy. And that’s bad. Our debt-to-GDP ratio is comparable to many European countries now experiencing riots and chaos. It’s worse than France, Spain, Ireland and the European average.  Any debt-to-GDP ratio over 90% is considered both dangerous and harmful to the economy.
• Our debt-per-capita is now higher than Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain – all countries that are on the verge of collapse. The real debt burden per family is around one million dollars.
• Obama has created $6.2 trillion in debt in four years, which is more debt than ALL American presidents combined have incurred.  Debt has gone from less than a trillion under Reagan to over $16.5 trillion under Obama.
• Our debt is projected to hit $25 trillion by 2022.
• The real federal debt is now at $140,000 per taxpayer.
• If the government confiscated every cent of every American who earns more than $66,000, it still wouldn’t even come close to digging the government out of its hole.
• Obama’s proposed second term programs will increase the debt by $4.4 trillion over the next four years, hitting $20.3 trillion by the end of his second term.
• The interest on the debt is quickly becoming a larger number than the total revenue collected by the government.  This means that in order to service the debt, entitlements will have to be cut, something most politicians refuse to do.
• Federal government spending as a percentage of GDP is at 25%. The norm is around 20%.  This is the highest in American history (barring the WWII years).

The longer these problems are allowed to metastasize, the worse the final economic dislocation will be. The voices of fiscal sanity need to hold the line here. My biggest concern is that America will suffer through the pain of a government shutdown without really solving the problems. The sooner we solve our fiscal imbalances, the smaller the pain will be. If we continue to put off the inevitable, the ultimate day of reckoning will be much worse. The Plain Truth!