Go on, shut the Government Down!
If you have been paying attention, you know that there is a
crisis in our government right now that everyone in there acknowledges.
Our government (our country) is facing three immediate
crises that overshadow just about everything else: Obamacare, the deficit, and
the debt.
Obamacare is getting the most attention right now, because
it is being sold as a choice between either funding it or shutting down the
government. At first glance, it looks
like the Republicans will take a beating on this, because the messages that the
public is hearing from the media are the wrong ones.
I believe shutting the government down is a very real and
even needed possibility, but it needs a little more public warning and
education. So this is probably not the
best time, but a few months from now could work.
The immediate crisis at hand is that our government will
soon reach the debt limit, i.e. the amount of money that it can borrow to keep
running. It is already 17 trillion
dollars in debt, and it wants to raise that limit, both now and in the future, so
that by the time Obama leaves office, if he lasts his full term, our country
will be over 20 trillion dollars in debt.
Does anybody see a problem here?
And so, because even those who want to keep spending more
money than there is know that something is wrong with this, they are doing
several things that they don’t want you to know about.
First, they are printing money as fast as they can, about a
trillion dollars a year. The reason they
will give you is that they believe, or say, that this will stimulate the
economy and create jobs. It hasn’t been
working, but they will keep on doing it until the economy either gets better on
its own in spite of their efforts, or until there is a major change in who is
running the country.
Some of them may believe this, but the bigger reason is that
this will decrease the value of the dollar, and thus the true amount of all the
debt they have incurred so far. Of
course, this will also decrease the value of all of your savings and checking
accounts and your paycheck.
That is also a main reason for the price of everything going
up. The official rate of inflation won’t
show this, because the government learned a long time ago not to include a lot
of the things that are going up, so that the rate will appear less than it
really is.
The second thing they are doing is keeping interest rates
low. When they have debt, they have to
pay interest on it, and this way the amount of money the government owes on its
debt is lower than it would have been otherwise. But, of course, that means that all the money
you have saved will not get much interest either. In the past, people used to be able to live
off their interest, but not any more, or at least until different people are
running our country.
They are also using this money to buy our governments’
debt. That’s like paying off a credit
card with a credit card.
The Republicans in Congress are willing to raise the debt
ceiling in the mean time, let the government continue spending at the current
levels for a while, but they will not allow any money to be spent on
Obamacare. They want the Democrats to
have to choose between either abandoning Obamacare or shutting down the
government.
But the fact is that our country is riding on an express
train, and the bridge is out. We don’t
know how much farther it is to that bridge, but we will get there if we don’t
stop the train and change course.
The reason that the United States has been able to
borrow so much for so long without serious repercussions is that the dollar is
the world’s reserve currency. A lot of
the world trading uses dollars. But that
is changing, as the rest of the world sees us printing money and devaluing the
dollar. Why should they buy our dollars
when its value keeps shrinking?
When that happens, the recession of 2008 will look good by
comparison. The depression of the 1930’s
will look good.
If we wait too long, it will be the presidential election season,
and that will not be a good time to have this conversation. Actually the best time is now, when we are at
least a year away from the next election, and the lesser one at that.
Choose a date. Any
date.
Spending bills have to originate in the House. And that is the only place in Washington now that has
some people with common sense.
Let it be known that after that date, there will be no more
debt limit increases. None. Somebody has to say $17 trillion dollars is
enough. If we wait until the next
presidential election, it will be over $20 trillion. If we lose the world’s reserve currency
status, it won’t matter anyway. The
dollar won’t be worth more than the paper it’s printed on.
Congress has to declare that this will be the sole order of
business in the meantime. No more
immigration. No more gun control. Until we get this thing resolved.
The government has to be cut. Entitlements need to be changed. We can’t keep financing things with borrowed
or printed money.
