Digging Deeper Into Debt
By Rabbi David Eidensohn
The United States government is in serious financial trouble, according to Treasury statistics reported by the Associated Press on May 20, 2002. What is amazing is that the news has just floated away, and is not being trumpeted by the media. This itself is highly suspicious, but we will get to that. Meanwhile, the facts, dug up from the Treasury report and the Associated Press recording of that report, are:
Comparing the first seven months of this year, 2002, with last year, 2001, we see an enormous change. Government spending has risen by 8.7 percent, while total revenues are down by 10.9 percent.
What does this mean? If government spending is up by 8.7 percent while earnings are down by 10.9 percent, this means that we have a total decline from last year of 19.6 percent. In other words, the government is going backwards financially by about one fifth in only one year. If you or I would have a decline of one fifth in one year in our business or income, we would panic. The government simply states the facts, and prints more money.
If you or I had such a problem, we would balance our loss of income by cutting expenditures. Do you think the Federal government will do this? Ho, ho.
Therefore, the process that cut government's financial base by one fifth in one year is likely to continue. Nobody will call "halt."
Another fact released by the Treasury reported by the Associated Press is that the annual deficit for government spending this year is expected to be $100,000,000,000. That's right; one hundred billion dollars will be missing. Where will we get it? We will borrow. Consider what would happen if we pay on one hundred billion dollars only one percent interest. How much will that be? One percent of a hundred is one; so one percent of a hundred billion is one billion. This means, that we must pay, for one percent interest, one billion dollars, just for the new deficit! However, who will lend us a hundred billion dollars at a mere one percent interest? Surely, a higher interest rate is called for. This, again, is not for the Federal deficit, which is about six trillion dollars, only for the new annual deficit, of a "mere" hundred billion dollars.
Another statistic is that tax revenues from individuals and corporations were down about one fifth. We are obviously earning much less money, a fifth less. How then can we spend 8.7 percent more?
The biggest spending category was Social Security, which cannot be changed without violating government promises when it received Social Security monies from contributors. Therefore, 280.4 billion dollars cannot be touched. Health and Human Services Department Programs cost $266.3 billion. Already, states have rebelled at the cuts the Federal Government is making in Medicare and Medicaid, and in many states, old people are just hanging without help. There is nothing to cut there. Things are so bad with the poor and the elderly that a Federal court has just allowed the indigent to sue the states for Medicare and Medicaid. The states are staggering under their own burdens, and cannot help the elderly and the poor.
That leaves the military, with expenditures of $187.2 billion dollars. Shall we cut out the Navy or the Air Force? Or shall we surrender to terrorists? The final category is paying the interest on the public debt, which is a whopping $181.2 billion, only six billion dollars less than the entire military budget! Very soon, the debt payments will overcome the military budget. In other words, we could have a free military if we had no national debt. Paying interest on the national debt is the major problem, because the debt just grows by leaps and bounds. It is now about six trillion dollars (recently increased by 750 billion because the government was broke.) SIX TRILLION DOLLARS---It looks like this: $6,000,000,000,000!
Gone are the days when we could just scrape off some fat and maintain ourselves. Now, we are scraping off old people who have nobody to help them and who need very expensive medications. Some new medicines cost hundreds of dollars per week.
Speaking of old people, Alan Greenspan, on April 27, 2001, said that (we will soon translate it), "Were we fully accruing the benefit liabilities inferable from existing law, these retirement programs would currently be in deficit, and contingent liabilities amounting to about $10 trillion for social security alone would have been added to the current debt to the public. When the baby boom generation retires, and as the population subsequently ages further, these contingent liabilities will come due (our emphasis)..."
Translated, this means that America has about six trillion dollars in actual debt. It has potential debt of ten trillion dollars, to retirees. These old people are going to retire, meaning that our deficit will be about sixteen trillion dollars on a good day. When we realize that our deficits are exploding even without retirees, and the debt limit was very recently raised by 750 billion dollars, we realize that our debt may be incredible. What does it mean to owe six trillion plus ten trillion dollars? It means we must pay interest on sixteen trillion dollars, and every penny paid on interest in down the tube, lost, wasted.
Again, to sharpen Mr. Greenspan's warning about the incoming ten trillion dollar debt for retirees, recent statistics have shown that each year weakens the working base and expands the taking base for Social Security largesse. Americans are so harried with working and so worried about divorce, so afraid to have children or disinterested in them, that they cannot have large families, and therefore, the coming generations will be a small amount of people supporting a huge among of retirees. This is economically impossible. We are just sitting here waiting for the End, and nobody is really doing anything about it.
Our country now lives by borrowing money it has no way to repay. The national debt is not only increasing but ballooning, and with social security, stands to explode by ten trillion dollars as Mr. Greenspan avers. Let's be masochists and look at some more figures about our national economy.
The government tells us (www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm) that Interest expense for Fiscal year 2001 was $359 with nine zeros, which means, 369 billion dollars. The money paid was for interest on a debt of about six trillion dollars. If the debt increases with social security and the present rate of debt increases for general upkeep of the government, it is entirely likely that the national debt will be not six but eighteen trillion dollars in the near future. The debt will triple, and so will the interest, making the figure for annual interest not 359 billion dollars but over a trillion dollars. This, again, is just for the interest! If something is not done, these gloomy figures will be realized, and they are the trend.
Indeed, from 1988 to 1998, the annual cost of paying for the interest on the Federal Debt constantly rose to an incredible seventy percent, from 214 billion dollars in 1988 to 363 billion dollars in 1998. Then, for four years, when the economy was awash in money, an attempt was made to pay down the debt. For four years the debt dropped, so that it went from 363 billion dollars in 1998 to 359 billion dollars in 2001. This is a drop of only about four billion dollars out of over three hundred billion. That is all that was done at the best of times. This is not paying down the debt; it is a joke. Why are people not foaming at the mouth about this instead of all of the stupidities we read about every day?
The liberals are not talking about it because they realize it means the end of government programs and the entitlements they espouse. The rich Republicans are not talking about it because they are the ones destroying the economy by leaving America and making blood money off of the slaves in China and elsewhere. The family lobby is not talking about it because they don't like the word money, it doesn't rhyme with family. They don't know that money is what makes families run. I have been involved in family and divorce for several decades, and I know.
We need a "buy America" campaign, to revive the industries on our shores so badly undercut by the slaves in China, supported by global capitalism. If our economy is hemorrhaging, our strength is reduced. If we owe six trillion plus dollars and pay interest, those who lend us and own our bonds control our destiny. Anytime they call in their debts our country can stagger and even collapse, or declare bankruptcy. We will be slaves to global economics, just like the banana republics.
We cannot and will not cut that much, although, there is always some waste, like what they spend on the Gay Lobby to fight AIDS, which the Gay Lobby uses to spread AIDS. Our only hope is to reach deep into our inner and eternal strength, American manufacture and industry. I don't mean the virtual kinds that have no assets. I mean companies that manufacture lamps, so that I don't have to use one made in China because Viking doesn't sell any other kind. We have got to make it very expensive and even intolerable for an American company to leave our shores and to hire slaves and those who get paid with slave wages.
A company that goes global should only deal in our country by paying heavy taxes. We must "pierce the veil" and make sure that no funny fronts are evading our inspections. We must now, return to asset-based manufacturing, support American industry and workers, and stop pouring our money into a global system that will turn on us at the first opportunity and destroy us.
We must improve our school system, even if it means breaking the back of the teacher's lobby in order to bring the power of the Internet into modern schooling. If we don't, home schoolers will win all of the prizes. We must utilize the Internet and make other improvements to the health industry, so that doctors don't spend all of our money buying insurance for a ridiculous system that destroys them if they make some kind of a mistake. If a doctor suggests surgery, a panel of experts, perhaps on the Internet, should review the decision because we can send x-rays and all records over the web. When the panel agrees to the surgery, any suing will be very limited. By allowing International experts on the Internet to monitor what doctors do, the doctors won't be living in terror, and people will afford health insurance.
We have got to get away from dependence on oil, and to take energy free from nature, using wind, heat and the flow of water. We should develop our deserts to provide normal spaces for people to grow, instead of pouring buildings on top of other buildings where people live like rats. There is a lot we can do, but only when we know we have very little time to do it.
We have to stop the Gay Lobby, and stop AIDS and HIV. We must utterly eliminate all HIV Confidentialty Laws, because they are spreading HIV and AIDS at a time when each person getting sick will require a fortune for medical help.
If the liberals won't talk about our impending financial doom, and the rich Republicans won't, the family activists must rise up and demand that we preserve the future with prudent financial planning and innovations by technology. Break the back of the China, teachers and gay lobbies, and you are going to save our budget, our children, and everything else.