Government Spending Creates Bondage

by Marvin Pirila

Our country took a bad turn after President Coolidge left office, incurring debt steadily, without real plans of repaying it.  To this day, Congress and the White House continue to outspend its revenues, spend where it should not, and refuses to make sensible, sizable spending cuts.  Their addiction to spending future monies for a present, yet temporary advantage never ends.  They have gone as far as borrowing from foreign countries to continue the endless spending spree.  The U.S. now exceeds reasonable debt limits and pays increasingly more interest on its debt.

Congress essentially crippled future generations for some “theoretical” advantage temporarily.  Stimulus money does not work as many trials have proven.  Stimulus money is nothing more than a means to a political end.  It does not serve the country in any beneficial way.

Unfortunately, politicians for 100 years have had no lasting backbone to say no to the endless requests for government handouts.  The last one was President Coolidge and he proved a tight budget, responsible spending, and less taxation led to consistent healthy growth.  Congress and the White House have been handicapping future generations for 100 years by borrowing, overspending, stimulus, subsidies, etc.  Similar to a pig left in an endless buffet; the government will consume everything in its sight and want more.

Debt is debilitating and tends to corrupt both individuals and nations.  The debtors with excessive debt find their freedom and ambitions numbed.  They hesitate to change professions, seek new locations, and take financial opportunities.  Excessive debt dampens a persons’ search for happiness.  Every waking moment brings a sense of endless burden and the threat of potential disaster.

The Founders recognized the nature of debt as evil, because it is a form of bondage.  Debt is giving another power over your liberty.  The Founding Fathers felt the debts incurred by one generation are theirs to pay.  The rising generation, they felt, should be both politically and economically free from the burdens of the previous one.  They felt that passing debts onto the next generation would be forcing the children of the future to be born into a certain amount of bondage or involuntary servitude.  This position would be something for which they neither voted nor subscribed.  Literally, it would mean “taxation without representation” and a blatant violation of a fundamental republican principle.

The current population has been deceived into believing the stimulus spending would be a shortcut to economic prosperity, lifting the nation out of the depression.  There is no statistical evidence to show that spending money [that one does not have to begin with] provides anything more than a short artificial lift of the economy.  Tragically, the only purpose served is a political one.  Politicians give the people the illusion that spending vast sums of borrowed money would lead to prosperity, when it truly leads to just the opposite, a conclusion long ago predicted by the Founders.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman demonstrated that all non-Constitutional activities have proved counter-productive, some horrendously.  The unprecedented government spending realized under President Obama’s term has been purely political and is resulting in devastating effects.  When he took office, the national debt was at $10.25 trillion dollars, now it is at $15.47 trillion and rising.  TARP, Universal Health Care, Cash for Clunkers, and increased subsidies (green energy) have all added to this explosion of government spending, regulation, and intrusive intervention upon the rights of citizens.  There is no comprehensive plan to reign in the spending and pay the debts already owed.  This is clearly placing the burden upon the next generation, considered immoral and unjust by the Founding Fathers.

Dr. Friedman reported that after the federal government spent billions of dollars during the Great Depression the unemployment rate was higher in 1938 than it had been in 1932.  If World War II did not intervene requiring spending of billions of borrowed dollars while absorbing the unemployed, the New Deal experiments would have proven to be a fiscal failure through the eyes of many more Americans.

Studies since the 1930’s have proven stimulus spending never worked and never will, yet politicians sell it repeatedly to the American audience who fail to understand that spending tomorrow’s money today is passing the burden to the next generation.  The U.S. National Debt has increased every single year since 1966, and exploded when President Obama took office.

A look at Greece shows that continually pumping money into their economy has done nothing except bring all of the European Union to the brink of collapse.  During the time that government should be shrinking, deregulation should be taking place, and numerous laws need repealing, our country is doing exactly the opposite.

If studies have shown that stimulus spending is futile, lengthens recessions, and burdens the future generations, why do it?  Reduced government spending, greater payments on the debt, and cutting subsidies is not popular.  Even though it is the moral, constitutional thing to do, you risk losing re-election. 

Why do the American people believe in budgets and deficit reduction at home and not in government?  The government budget is no different from the average household budget.  You do not spend what you cannot afford, just to pass the debt along to others through taxation.  Worse yet, you do not spend money to leave for your children to pay.

In the last 100 years politicians failed to maintain balanced budgets and eliminate the debts, they incurred.  Our Forefathers understood these were necessary if we were to remain strong, resilient, and self-reliant.  Congress took our money from Medicaid and Social Security and squandered it.  Anywhere Congress could change accounting procedures to take money or had coffers to raid, they have.  The United States has always been the shining star of the world but its light is not as bright as it once was because of its horrible management over the last century.  With the recent credit downgrade, continued deficit spending, and exploding debt we are risking our nations’ financial collapse.

As Mark Levine states in his book, Ameritopia, “The best that can be said is that all that stands between the individual and tyranny is a resolute and sober people.”  The return to the principles established in the Constitution is long overdue.  We stand now on the razor blade’s edge of our existence as a free, democratic republic.  If we do not sober up now and disallow our politicians from squandering our freedoms and that of our children, we are lost and all will become hopeless.  It is foolhardy to take on debts one cannot pay on their own; it is immoral and unjust to pass your debts onto another who did not have the benefits of those costs.

Amazingly, the President and many Congressmen say we do not have a spending problem it is a revenue problem.  They want the American public to believe they can make it all better by taxing the few people left working at much higher rates.  The working back is already strained and carrying too much of the load for useless bureaucrats.  Politicians are completely detached from the brink of disaster they have brought us.  Perhaps it is nothing more than the true realization that our problems are not theirs.  Their kids will not suffer the ultimate price they would have ours.  When we look to government for answers, we have forgotten that the answers come from God, not man.  The cost of dependency upon the government is bondage and the loss of individual liberties.