It Is Not Just The Republicans-It Is The Democrats Too

In the past few days, I have written much about the Republicans in Congress and the special interest groups they seem so intent on supporting. I have made many points about representatives who are giving all the concessions in the budget to big business. It is not just the Republicans who have left America financially crippled, however. The Democrats have also voted to add more debt to our country's financial burden over and over again.

I do not want to trivialize the difficulty they face in making these enormously important decisions. After all, we are talking about the future of America and the U.S. is facing many, very serious problems. The way our problems have been dealt with in the past is to throw money at them. THIS MUST STOP. It has resulted in annual deficits adding trillions of dollars to America's debt. The financial consequences of these past decisions have been ignored. We do not have the luxury of ignoring them any longer.

In the past the U.S. was a tremendously industrious society. We produced goods and services which were sought worldwide. But, now, we have outsourced many jobs to countries where labor is cheaper. When jobs go overseas it reduces our tax base which further increases our annual deficits and ultimately the overall debt. It also places a greater burden on each tax payer to pay a higher percentage of the overall costs.

We cannot continue to act like spoiled children who must have everything they want. The definition of 'budget' should be to live within one's means. It has become something entirely different for our government leaders, however. They call it a budget because they can estimate the amount of money that will be collected in taxes and they have to find a way to 'budget' (collect) the rest of their spending either through borrowing or through printing more money.

In America, our workforce consists of approximately 124 million people. The population of the U.S. is approximately 310 million people. This means that about 40% of our population obtains income from employment. Of these 124 million people, roughly 6% of them are lawyers. If you look at the makeup of our congress, however, you will find about 45% of them are lawyers. The only point I am trying to make here is perhaps we need more economists in congress and fewer lawyers. We do not need more laws, we need more rational thinking from people who understand the economic consequences of their decisions. The constitution guarantees us taxation under representation. This means we get to vote for our representatives before they can levy taxes upon us. That places the responsibility back on us. Surely, we as voters can find people more qualified to manage the financial affairs of our government than lawyers.

There are many areas of the budget which we cannot afford as a nation. We cannot afford to continue our military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot afford national health care. We cannot afford to continue to bail out the banking industry. We cannot afford to keep paying billions of dollars to try to influence the governments of the rest of the world. The U.S. now owes more money than any other nation on the planet. The estimated debt will be at 16 trillion dollars by the end of 2012. The average interest rate paid on this debt is about 4.6%. This means that by the end of 2012 we as a nation will be paying 736 billion dollars each year just in interest on the debt.

Americans, we must take more control over our elected officials. Call your congressmen, write them, email their staff. Tell them to stop wasting our taxes on foreign wars, on mandatory health insurance (which will end up costing each of us more as well), on bank bailouts and on trying to influence foreign governments. It is time for 'we the people' to take back our constitutional rights.