What are congressional spenders smoking?
By Krista Kafer krista555@msn.com
I first engaged in deficit spending in high school. In between paychecks I borrowed money from my parents to buy cloths, cigarettes, diet coke and other “needs.” In college I combined deficit spending via credit cards with creative accounting measures like check floating. These monthly deficits led to thousands in debt. Paying it back, much like say quitting smoking was far more difficult that I expected when I started. I learned that spending more than one makes to pay for things one doesn’t need leads to hard times in the future.
This kind of behavior is somewhat understandable in a 20 year old. What excuse does Congress have?
The Denver Post reports that the “Emergency Spending Bill” before the U.S. Senate is tipping the scale at $106 billion.
Intended for emergencies like the war on terrorism or Hurricane Katrina relief, the legislation spends billions of our tax dollars on handouts and pork projects.
Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation told reporters: “Emergencies are not true emergencies when you’re repairing highway backlogs that go back several years, when Congress is giving large handouts to farmers, despite record farm incomes, and when you’re relocating a rail line that was proposed decades ago.” For more of the Heritage-Congress spending smackdown, see this link and this one.
The response by Congress and the President to a critical public has been an amusing do- as-I-say-not-as-I-do. Senator Frist’s rebuke of his chamber’s actions — “Families must live within their means, and so should Washington. I applaud the Administration’s determination to stick to true emergency spending, and will support a veto, if necessary, to keep federal spending under control” — is a little hollow when you consider he and his friends wrote the darn thing. The President’s veto threat is equally comical considering he doesn’t do vetoes.
In fairness not everyone in Congress is a public-posturing big deficit spender. The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of House conservative, has proposed a responsible budget. You gotta wonder, though, if any of the RSC members have squirreled away any pork in this latest bill.
It kind of reminds me of all those times I begged Dad for a loan for groceries or gas and spend most of it on cigarettes, candy, diet coke, and beer. I admit it. I used my Visa to buy cds and cloths, and more cigarettes. I admit it. I was 20 years old. The debt caught up with me and I had to pay it. Who’s going to pay back the over $8 trillion that Congress has racked up with yearly deficits to pay for the country’s “needs”? I borrowed money for cigarettes. What are they smoking?
The author can be reached at John@BackBoneAmerica.net
Congress is doing this because most Republicans on the Hill have forgotten the core principles of our party: Lower taxes/spending, less regulation, and personal responsibility. With the exception of Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul and a few others, they seem to have almost gone insane when it comes to fiscal policy.
Another reason is our new Federal Reserve Chairman, “Helicopter Commander” Ben Bernake. I nicknamed him this because of a speech he made in 2001, where he said our country could crank up the printing presses, and drop an unlimited supply of dollars from helicopters to keep the economy going.
Congress has also drank the Keynesian Kool-Aid, beliving that borrowing, spending and juicing of the money supply will help us avoid a Financial Reckoning Day, where we’ll pay penance for our financial sins. This will help us delay the pain, just like a drunk does in drinking more tequila shots when he’s almready hammered at 2AM. The inevitable hangover will come, just a few hours later – or a few years, when it comes to the American economy.
Our leaders have no intention of trying to pay back the $8-plus trillion in debt – not to mention the future obligations for Social Security and Medicaid. Our leaders have chosen to inflate the money supply, so they can pay back this debt in cheaper dollars. That’s why I highly recommend that people invest in commodities (such as silver and gold) instead of financial paper assets, such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds for at least the next 5-10 years.
by Brian Ochsner | Monday, May 1, 2006 | 4:34 pmThe last part of my comment didn’t make sense. The federal government has no intention of trying to re-pay the debt by doing the common sense thing: Reducing spending, having a surplus, and using that surplus to pay down our federal debt.
It looks like the strategery is to keep govt. spending high to keep the GDP and economy going, inflate the heck out of the money supply, and use those highly/hyper-inflated dollars to pay the interest and maybe some principal on the debt. This monetization of the debt is better for govt., but not for consumers as our dollars continue to lose purchasing power every year.
by Brian Ochsner | Tuesday, May 2, 2006 | 9:35 pm