PITTSBURGH (Newsradio KDKA) - Our federal government and bureaucracy can be so repulsive. Those you have sent to the Nation’s Capital and the unelected they have hired have spent you into oblivion. And, now they are trying to convince you to allow them to call the theoretical credit card company in order to increase the spending limits even though they already spend more each year than we collectively earn. That is correct. The United States, as a whole, out of all the economic activity and wealth created each year is on the verge of financial ruin. Those in charge of the federal government that you elect, listen to, blindly believe, and worship spend far more than the amount of tax money we send them. The ‘machine’ spent $3.45 trillion more than it took last year alone, according to USAFact.org. The federal government spent $700 million an hour yesterday, according to DataLab, a US government website.
The American worker makes a median average of $67,250 a year. The average percentage of income tax paid is 14.8% or $9,953, according to The Balance. This year alone, we will pay $378 billion in INTEREST on the national debt! That puts ‘debt servicing’ 5th on the list of federal budget items. The ‘Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’ reports that servicing the debt eats up 8% of ALL the federal taxes collected from every source and, at least $2,488 per household per year. Basically, 25% of the money that you personally send to Washington is used to pay INTEREST. Meanwhile, we have politicians who raise holy hell when a credit card company charges consumers interest rates of, say 16 or 18%. Make the minimum monthly payment and guess how long it will take to payoff. HA!
Every single citizen, regardless of age, owes $86,657 of the national debt. Divided up among only those paying income taxes: $229,000. Imagine what we could do, individually or collectively as a nation, if we did not owe that unholy amount of money! Imagine A: having that money in YOUR pocket, or B: having a pile of cash on-hand to upgrade our national issues or infrastructure with cash. If only we were not straddled with debt.
These poor spending habits ramped up in the 1980’s when our debt was manageable. The thought was that our economic growth would offset the spending. Our federal debt compared to our economic output was about 34% back then. In comparison, Chase Bank recommends individuals spend no more than 28% of their income on mortgage payments, so we were close to reality in those days. Even in 2001, the last time we had a surplus, we were 56%. Again, this is based on a belief that the good times will always roll. Today our debt is 125% of GDP. Expect the worst as our economy sputters through the Covid-era and government grows more invasive. As they say in New Orleans: Laissez les bon temps rouler.
Raising the debt limit is a short term band-aid covering the gusher of insolvency. We are broke. We are merely shuffling money from one account to another. Debt is suffocating! Their decades of binge spending are no longer enhancing your quality of life. It is enslaving you.
I have said that our federal government should be run like our households or small businesses. Yes, there will be debt but keep it manageable. Others disagree. They say a government should be a ‘pass-through’ effort. It should merely move money from your pocket to some other effort. Yet others want the government to run like a non-profit organization since that is basically what it is. But, name me one non-profit that straddles its donors with obscene debt.
Many politicians say that now is a great time to borrow trillions more because interest rates are extremely low. They say that if we don’t borrow more then we won’t be able to pay our bills. What? They add that taxpayers have a moral obligation to pay back the massive bills they have happily and heroically rung up. We must pay back the creditors they cozied up to. Both of them knew the money was not theirs. The politician agreed to borrow more than you can afford from the creditors that knew you couldn’t pay it back. Both got rich taking your money.
Who has the moral obligation: The person who has to pay the bill or the person spending the money? We can have any conversation we’d like about funding various social programs once the debts are paid and money is in the bank. But, right now the bank is empty, we are printing money out of thin air with no backing, and we are spending more wealth than can ever be created. They want you to raise the debt limit so they can borrow money to pay back money they have already borrowed. You are being suckered in this argument.
To me, Raising the debt limit is just like begging to raise your credit card limit by promising to max it out even though you are not bringing in any more income. No bank would ever agree to that.
The feds would have three options: raise taxes, print more worthless bills to cause the ‘hidden tax’ of inflation to rise drastically, or both. After all, that is what you agreed to when you voted for all those campaign promises, right?
Kevin Battle is saving to buy a pot to pee in. He is co-host of the KDKA Radio Morning Show with Larry Richert.
It airs M-F 5a-9a on Pittsburgh’s 100.1FM & AM1020 KDKA or on the free Audacy app. Ask your smartspeaker to: ‘Play KDKA.’ Thank you.
