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The Mounting Debt
by Jacob G. Hornberger

A front-page article in today’s New York Times entitled “Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government” details what conservatives and liberals have done to our country with their out-of-control federal spending for their welfare-warfare state. The article reports that the national debt is now topping $12 trillion.

That debt, of course, represents the difference between what the feds are spending and how much the IRS is collecting from the American people in the form of income taxes. Rather than order the IRS to go out and increase the amount of people’s income it was seizing, an act that might antagonize voters, the Big Spenders, conservatives and liberals alike, simply went out and borrowed the money.

The national debt now amounts to about $40,000 per citizen. What would you do if the IRS showed up at your doorstep demanding payment of your family’s share of that debt? If you’re married and have two children, you’d be facing a lien on your home or retirement account totaling $160,000. That’s what these people have done to us with their beloved welfare-warfare programs and the out-of-control costs of such programs.

The Times reports: “Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.”

Meanwhile, the Big Spenders continue with their grandiose spending programs, not only here at home but abroad as well. The expensive socialist health care plan working its way through Congress is a good example, as is the continued occupation and rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq. Everybody is just proceeding forward with his Big Spending as if everything was hunky dory, like life on the Titanic before the fateful crash.

Today, Republicans are playing their standard political game of railing against the Big Spending Democrats. It’s one of their strategies for regaining political power. But the truth is that Republicans are no different when it comes to Big Spending. President George W. Bush’s regime was a good example. It was one of the Biggest Spending regimes in U.S. history. Not surprisingly, with the exception of Ron Paul and maybe a couple of others, you didn’t see Republicans railing against Big Spending when their man was in power. And if they do regain power, you can count on them to seal their lips when their man embarks on his Big Spending spree.

Of course, this mounting debt isn’t just a recent problem. It’s been going on for decades, since at least the time of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. It’s a direct consequence of an ever-expanding welfare state here at home and an ever-expanding military empire abroad. Once Americans discovered that they could use the federal government to feather their personal nests, the floodgates to Big Spending were opened. And the same holds true with respect to the fateful decision of charging the U.S. military with the task of establishing a vast overseas empire with foreign aid, coups, invasions, assassinations, installation of puppet regimes, embargoes, sanctions, wars of aggression, interventions, occupations, spreading democracy, and providing welfare to foreigners.

Obviously, the welfare-warfare state has turned out to be very expensive. If the immorality of this way of life isn’t enough to cause Americans to abandon this horrible experiment in Big Government, maybe the ever-growing financial burden of it all will induce them to join up with us libertarians to dismantle the welfare-warfare programs before it’s too late.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.