ONN: Approaching the rapids for the U.S. economy

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Approaching the rapids for the U.S. economy

by David Aikman – OneNewsNow Columnist

December 23, 2009

Americans have been so distracted -- and sometimes exhausted -- by the healthcare debate in the House and Senate that they may have overlooked what will clearly be the biggest challenge to face any administration in the next half-decade: America's debt, deficit, and growing national poverty.

One of the most frightening Internet websites to come across is USdebtclock.org. It's especially threatening because the numbers are always changing -- they are increasing. An array of different figures, all of them altering by the microsend, tells you right now how much U.S. national debt is, what the current deficit is, what the national GDP is, what the total U.S. population is, and how much each American citizen owes to pay the national debt. At press time, the figures were as follows:

National Debt: $12.15 trillion

Gross Domestic Product: $13.85 trillion

U.S. deficit*: $1.54 trillion

Amount owed by each citizen: $39,134

U.S. population: 308,212,630

* The difference between government revenue and government expenditure.

Just to put these figures in perspective, the budget deficit at the end of President Bush's eight years in office was $440 billion. Today, less than a year later, it is $1.8 trillion. Last year, the percentage of the GDP -- currently $13.85 trillion, according to the "debt clock," but in other statistics $14.24 trillion, according to the U.S. government website for the Bureau of Economic Analysis -- represented by the national debt was about 42 percent. By the end of this year, by some estimates, it will be around 80 percent. To put it bluntly, the U.S. is in danger of heading towards bankruptcy. Just when we should be worrying, however, about unemployment stubbornly hovering around 10 percent, a massive federal spending bill of $1.1 trillion has been passed into law by the Congress, which has almost simultaneously announced that the allowable national debt of $12 trillion will be increased by an additional $2 trillion.

A family sitting around the kitchen table deep in debt would probably not ask the bank for -- and receive -- yet another line of credit to pay for its ever-increasing expenditures, especially when the chief bread-earner had just lost his job. But the U.S. government, in the form of the executive branch and the legislature, seems to feel no embarrassment in doing so. After all, the executive branch won't be accountable for any mistakes it is perceived to have committed until the next presidential election three years from now. As for legislators, many of them may feel that the "goodies" they have acquired for their states in the form of 5,224 "earmarks" -- thousands of dollars for a visitor's center on Bastrop, TX, $30,000 for the Woodstock Film Festival Youth Initiative -- will shelter them from any voter displeasure that they may have been party to bankrupting a great republic.

To its credit, the Obama administration has at least acknowledged that higher taxes will be needed to pay for the healthcare reform that the Senate seems on the point of passing. What seems to have escaped the attention of some of its partisans is that the healthcare reform package, regardless of whether it succeeds in bringing affordable healthcare to far more Americans than previously, creates yet another layer of "entitlement" programs that our children will be forced to pay for at even greater expense than we are forced to. With the influx of millions of just retired baby-boomers into the ranks of those who receive Social Security and Medicare, the money in the national piggy bank is running out fast. By the end of 2010, not only will there have to be serious cuts in federal spending, but the only way to bring in additional revenue will be to raise taxes.

President Obama started his political career in Chicago as a community organizer (translation: someone who politicizes a community to help it feel grievances it previously didn't know it had and to acquire the political muscle to force change in the surrounding society). Since he began his presidential campaign two years ago and since his inauguration, he has shown a pronounced preference for re-distributionism as a way of evening out economic disparities in society. (Remember his words about "spreading the wealth" to "Joe the Plumber" on the campaign trail last year?) He recently denounced Wall Street bankers as "fat cats." So some of them may be. But how about equivalent denunciation of his own party for padding needed spending bills with "earmark," pork-barrel add-ons. Silence there. Some people recall that presidential candidate Obama promised to veto earmarks. What's happened to the promise?

Now redistribution does work in the very short run because wealthier people are forced to share their wealth with poorer folks. But it is redistribution based on expropriating the wealth created by capitalists willing to take risks to make profits that will in the end benefit the whole community. The only way as a nation to get out of debt is to make it easier for small businesses to grow and expand, because it is small businesses that have made America prosperous in the past and that do more to create new jobs than any amount of government stimulus programs. State-controlled and state-initiated businesses almost never create money.

President Obama may not be a "socialist" in the narrowest sense of the word -- i.e., always preferring state-run corporations to private ones -- but he seems to be ignoring all the lessons of American economic history. Virtually all of the previous American recessions have been overcome by private economic initiative. Many people think "fat cats" have done much more for America's living standards than have bureaucrats.

Dr. David Aikman was a journalist with TIME Magazine for 23 years, and is now a professor of history at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. He has authored more than a dozen books, including "Jesus in Beijing" (Regnery, 2003), "Billy Graham: His Life and Influence" (Thomas Nelson, 2006) and "The Delusion of Disbelief" (Tyndale, 2008). His latest book, "The Mirage of Peace" (Regal), was released in September. Aikman is also the founder of Gegrapha, an international fellowship for Christians in the mainstream media.

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