December 29, 2009
Who Needs Fiscal Discipline
Decades or centuries from now, scholars will examine U.S. government documents from our time and notice something strange: In four consecutive years around the close of the 20th century, the federal budget was recorded as having a surplus. That hadn't happened since 1969, it hasn't happened since, and the way things are going, it may never happen again.Will the politicians ever realize that this IS THE ISSUE????Recent years have seen the collapse of all federal fiscal discipline. At the end of the 2001 fiscal year, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. Today, it's over $12 trillion. With the population at roughly 300 million, your share is, oh, about $40,000. And you ain't seen nothin' yet. In the next decade, according to the Obama administration's own estimates, Washington will pile up another $9 trillion in deficits.
This has been a bipartisan achievement. When Republicans controlled Congress and the executive branch during the Bush administration, the surpluses gave way to deficits. Now that Democrats are in power, they are doing the same, in spades. Both have found political advantage in lavishing voters with benefits that someone else (future voters) will have to pay for.
Probably not.
The dripping irony of this being published from the broken can't pay its bills state of Illinois is not lost on me.
