It’s as if it doesn’t exist, our massive national debt – which is nearing $20 trillion dollars.
You’d think this would be a huge story for the American media, given that President Obama – who in 2008, while still the Democratic presidential nominee, said that the addition of $5 trillion in debt under President George W. Bush was “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” – has since doubled down on that debt, seeing $10 trillion added during his two terms in office.
But then again, this is the same establishment media that has served more as a Pretorian guard for Obama than as a check on his abuses of power (and doubling of our debt), as our founders envisioned a free press would be.
So now, the next president – Obama having successfully kicked the can down the road – will begin his or her term on January 20, 2017 with an accumulated governmental and public debt of over $20 trillion. If we used every penny of gross domestic product to pay it off – which of course we can’t do – it would take nearly a year-and-a-half.
But even if our debt was completely paid off, if no changes are made to government entitlement programs or current congressional spending habits, our national debt would begin to rise again the very next fiscal year.
That’s because America doesn’t have a revenue problem. Our government has begun collecting record amounts of taxes. In fact, Uncle Sam is on pace to extract some $3 trillion from our economy this year alone. Our main issue is that our leaders have a spending problem. Long ago our politicians figured out what our founding fathers warned against: That once they could buy loyalty (and votes) using the public treasury, the sky would be the limit.
And indeed it has been. We’re so far in debt now, that without substantial reforms to our social welfare and benefits programs, there is no way we’ll ever pay off what we owe. That means at some point, our debt will become so large and intrusive that others will see the financial hole we have dug for ourselves and realize we can never get out of it. Our currency – the dollar – will lose its global reserve status and that will plunge not only our economy into the dungeon but the world’s other great economies will also crash.
But there is no will in Washington to implement the reforms virtually every lawmaker knows must be made.
This is a major story that our establishment media won’t cover because they’d have to break with their tradition of protecting one party over the other (even though both major political parties are responsible) and actually do the right thing. Anyone who has even casually mentioned reforming (as in cutting) these programs in the past has been savaged by a left-wing media establishment that would rather see our country destroyed than to help preserve it by supporting better policies.
So the crash will arrive, eventually, but far too many Americans won’t see it coming. That will make the media complicit in the scandal and the ensuing chaos the economic crash will cause.
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