Throughout the “debt crisis” debate, the administration kept saying we had to raise the debt ceiling to avoid default and a downgrading of our credit rating. They were wrong.
The credit rating never hinged on the debt ceiling and they knew it. They just wanted more money to spend. And the deal they came up with, has a dirty little secret that most people don’t realize. They didn’t cut one penny from spending.
You see, the government grows by default every year at a rate of between five and ten percent. Let’s call it an average of seven percent. That means that every year, federal agencies and departments expect that their new budgets will rise about seven percent at a minimum. Most years it goes higher.
So this year, when everyone was touting “cuts” in spending, they really only meant that they would not raise spending by the customary seven percent. Instead, they’d cut back to about five percent.
The bottom line on this is that Congress was disingenuous. Not only did they assure us that by raising the debt ceiling, our credit rating would remain secure, they never really made sure the vast majority of the American people understood that the credit rating had more to do with the amount of debt than anything else. So they raised the debt along with spending.
They assure us they’re going to start the process on a balanced budget amendment, but who knows when that will happen or how long it will take. In the meantime, we have a downgraded credit rating, a raised debt ceiling, and expanded spending.
The liberals insist that we must take care of the poor. They’re absolutely correct, but the poor will feel the effects of this situation more profoundly than anyone in the way of higher interest rates, higher unemployment, lower wages, and a more sluggish economy than we’ve seen yet in recent memory.
Yes, we have a moral imperative to care for our poor and disabled, but we also have a moral imperative to responsibly and wisely use our resources, read that as a balanced budget. We cannot and should not treat the poor as though they were dependent children.
Rather, we should create a climate to encourage business growth and job creation with good wages to bolster their dignity, earning power, and give them the opportunity to improve their quality of life through their own efforts.
To achieve that, we must take spending down to levels of years ago. The administration always talks about shared responsibility, it’s about time they shared the responsibility of the cuts and quit complaining that they’ll have to make do. The rest of us have had to do it for years.
