It has to be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that the U.S. has a bad debt problem. I know people are used to living in debt – mortgages, car payments, credit card payments, student loans – so maybe it would help to put our situation in terms you can understand.
The U.S. has an annual income of $26,000 (plus nine more zeros, but we’ll ignore them) and annual expenditures of $38,000. Our total debt is $160,000. We should be paying $2000 a month to pay off our debts. Instead we only pay $20 of interest each month to our debtors, then borrow another $200 a month or from $10,000 to $16,000 a year.
Conservatives want to reduce our annual debt by spending less. Liberals want to reduce it by taxing more. Conservatives want a clear path to a balanced budget (eventually). Liberals want to tax more. Libertarians want to balance the budget AND start paying down our debt. Liberals want to tax more.
If you tuned in to any of the talk shows this past weekend, the rhetoric was vitriolic even acidic. Conservatives patiently explained how they want to lower government expenditures. Liberals interrupted and spat out, taxes – we want more taxes. (Think back to Joe Biden being rude, crass, irreverent and facially obscene in his debate with Paul Ryan.)
Psychologists would call this irrational reaction of Democrats “denial.” This is usually a short term reaction to some stark change in circumstances. Hey, it’s understandable. It’s only human to react like that.
The Democrats have gone way beyond normal “denial.” They’re at the clinical level, at the point where schizophrenics have denial hard wired into their brains. It’s not just a truism that crazy people are the last ones to know they are crazy. It’s a fact, caused by this phenomenon called denial.
This debate over reducing government expenditures has been elevated to the front burner for two years now, since the sequestration train was set in motion. Conservatives have been harping on it for even longer than that. Yet, Democrats continue to totally, utterly ignore the issue.
Democrats are incensed by the mere mentioned of entitlement cuts. They react as if this is the first time anybody has ever mentioned the idea. They react as if it’s the most absurd idea they have ever in their whole lives heard mention of.
Hello? The government ran just fine four years ago when Bush was running $150 billion a year deficits. Obama has been racking up $150 billion a month ever since. The fiscal cliff resolution guarantees we will run $150 billion a month deficits for decades to come.
The Democrats are going to fix that with an extra $500 million a month in taxes on the rich, like with the latest fiscal cliff deal – or a total of $1 billion a month if the get their second round of tax increases on top wage earners?
Insanity, that’s what it is.
