The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released a report that shows a breathtaking amount of national debt on the horizon, a debt that will eventually have to be paid by someone, and you have no idea what a relief it is to know that someone will not be me.
This year alone, our country — thanks largely to the stupid and hysterical overreaction to the coronavirus — will rack up an additional $3.3 trillion — with a “T” — in debt.
That’s just one year — $3.3 trillion in a single year.
The report then looks into the future, and the future is not looking very bright.
By 2021, the national debt will top 104 percent of our annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
By 2023, the debt will top 107 percent of GDP.
By 2050, the debt will more than double the size of our annual economy.
As the Freedom for Economic Education (FEE) points out, the revisions to this outlook between 2019 and today are startling. “It’s important to note that the CBO’s findings show a drastic escalation in our financial dismay just since last year,” the FEE writes. “They now project a 45 percent higher debt-to-economy ratio in 2050 than they did in their 2019 projections.”
Now, I could list all the reasons why this is bad for the economy, how this house of cards will eventually collapse. But to be honest with you, I’ve been hearing doomsday deficit predictions for 35 years, going back to the Reagan Era, and they sound an awful lot like Global Warming predictions to me. They never come true, so I simply don’t buy them anymore.
The FEE does, though, make a good point about the morality, or immorality, as it were, about this:
Imagine a hypothetical pair of parents. They live in an upper-middle-class neighborhood and drive fancy cars. Yet all of a sudden something changes, and they find themselves in tough times financially. They have a few responsible options. They could cut back their spending. Or, they could borrow money to maintain their lavish lifestyle and pay it off themselves.
Instead, they choose to take out a credit card in their child’s name, load it up with hundreds of thousands in debt, and leave it for their kid to deal with when he or she grows up. We would all agree this is horrible, immoral parenting. Yet it’s also exactly what the federal government is doing to future generations of Americans.
Yep.
Now you can’t blame me. I’ve been a deficit hawk my whole life. While I no longer buy the sky-is-falling argument, I do find it obscene that a country as great as ours lives so far above its means when it comes to federal spending. Balanced budgets work very well in the states. Forces them to face things, including the reality of how raising taxes does not raise revenue. Quite the opposite in fact.
These federal deficits are out of control because our politicians — both Republican and Democrat — are out of control.
But so are voters.
No one cares.
And that now includes me.
I’ll be 55 next year, and in good conscience railed and voted against deficit spending and loved it when former President Bill Clinton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich got together and balanced the budget. But I’ve lost this fight. Y’all made your choice. I’m too old to worry about things I can’t control, so knock yourselves out.
The days of the deficit hawk are over. Long over. Everyone wants their cake and to eat it too. Have at it.
Final note: don’t any of you even think about touching my Social Security and Medicare. Paid into them 40 years already. Want what’s mine. Every penny. Wish Social Security and Medicare didn’t exist. Sure do. Wish I could have kept that money and invested it in an IRA, or something. Sure do. But I don’t make the rules, so don’t you dare touch it. That’s my money. Not yours.
Anyway, all you young people need to just keep right on voting for big government. I’m sure the check will never come due. But if it does, that sound you’ll hear will be me pointing and laughing. And if that sounds smug, it’s meant to sound smug. Dummies.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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