So a Republican controlled Senate voted this week to raise the debt ceiling to $9,000,000,000,000.00. Yep, $9 trillion. Strangely, I'm not surprised. After all, this epitomizes our culture--we Americans love to spend, and we spend what we don't have (average American credit card debt: $8562). But I digress.
Was it a good thing that the Senate passed this raise? Had the Senate not passed this, then America would have defaulted on its loans, and the government would have shut down. Now that wouldn't have been good. However, we should not have gotten here in the first place. Sadly, a Republican President, Republican Congress, and Republican Senate brought us to this point.
In the past, Republicans would criticize "tax and spend Democrats." After all, conservatives called the Republican party home. However, Republicans have turned into "cut and spend Republicans"—cut taxes and spend like there was no tomorrow. I understand that we are fighting a war and we had a terrible hurricane season, so we need to spend money. But we can't continue spending at this rate without raising taxes (yes, I just advocated raising taxes) rather than cutting taxes OR we must cut programs. Yet the leadership is not present in Washington to get this done. It is true that we have noble Senators like Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ) who are willing to stand up to out of control spending. But most elected officials would rather avoid confrontation than make tough decisions.
It is imperative that reckless deficit spending ends! When we borrow, we must borrow from other countries, which makes us less independent. The top two lenders to America are Japan and China. The Bible makes it clear that the borrower is a servant to the lender (Prov 22:7). I'm not feeling too good about being a slave to Japan, let alone communist China or ANY country for that matter.
Of course the inevitable question must be answered: should we care? I believe we should. So often, Americans become very apathetic or disinterested in political issues. Sure things like abortion and war will get us worked up, but when a question like deficit spending comes up, most people tune out believing it is "just politics." Yet I believe this attitude is a detriment to the country. Elected officials respond to their constituents, after all, they want to be elected. I mean look what happened with the Dubai ports issue. Washington was flooded with calls against the deal, and Congress responded appropriately. The citizenry must speak up about such issues.
Let's stop placing the country on a shaky financial foundation. Let your elected officials know how you feel about the issue (it only takes a phone call--nothing elaborate--just tell them your name, where your calling from, and that you don't support deficit spending—it’ll take you about 5 minutes). This is an important issue for the whole country. Let those in Washington know how you feel. Let's stop buying gold Eiffel towers!
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2 comments:
Dependency on other countries is definitely a bad thing. Are you aware of how much of that debt is not to other countries but to the American people themselves? I would be interested in those statistics (realizing, of course, that the placement of the debt is not the major point of your post). I agree with you completely on this subject. Deficit spending needs to end, and we really ought to cut some unnecessary programs. One of the problems is convincing the individual senators/representatives that their pet projects are unnecessary!
I did forget to say, though, that those 28 gold Eiffel Towers might look nice on the lawn in front of the Capitol!!
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