Nine Trillion Dollars!

That’s the newly minted debt limit for the United States - $9,000,000,000,000.00. America hasn’t seen that many zeros since early on the morning of December 7, 1941. Only this time, Admiral Yamamoto’s pilots are flying off the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan while moored at the Anacostia Naval Station in Washington, DC.

When I was a card-carrying Young Reb, our Articles of Faith included a balanced budget and the elimination of the national debt. Then along came the Great Communicator and the debt went all “win one for the Gipper” on us. The last three Rebs who have bedded down on the upper floors of the East Wing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have amassed greater budget deficits and more national debt than the other 40 presidents combined. No. 43 has recorded the four highest annual deficits in history; his father has the next three highest. Reagan increased the national debt by 188.2% in his eight years, compared to 13.7% during Clinton’s two terms.

Until 1981, war was the primary cause of national debt, with large spikes following the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and again after WWI and WWII. Even so, the debt was only $260 billion in 1946. From 1946 to 1981 the debt increased consistent with the rate of inflation. As a percentage of the GDP, the debt fell continuously from 1946 to 1981. So what happened in 1981? “Well,” that’s when the president’s Council of Economic Advisers began miming Bedtime for Bonzo and the debt began to skyrocket under the voodoo (nee supply-side) economics of Presidents Reagan and Bush I. It fell again under Clinton, but resumed its upward spiral under Bush II. The Rebs appear to be fascinated with the sideshow sleight of hand in which you use deficit spending to try to increase the GDP faster than the deficit spending – and then claim that the debt is actually decreasing relative to the rising GDP. I think the pea is under the shell on the right in this game.

Simply put, the staggering national debt that we’re carrying is a Reb creation. That would be the same Rebs who’ve spent decades calling the Dims the “tax and spend” party. It’s true, the Dims do like to tax and spend; they just haven’t mastered the art of cutting taxes and then continuing to spend like drunken sailors. This turn of events has left a number of us looking back at the Rebs and asking the question posed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – “Who are those guys?”

Whether right or wrong, my simplistic vision for America is that it should be run a little more consistent with the common wisdom that most parents try to pass on to their children – don’t spend more money than you make. Everyone knows that debt can eat up a household budget and, with the exception of temporary or carefully structured debt for a college education and the purchase of a home, and maybe one car, it should be tightly managed if not avoided altogether. The Rebs appear to favor a vision in which America is run like a growth business – leverage its assets with whatever debt can be handled without driving the cost of capital too high to be competitive. Of course, unlike a family and a country, a business can run the risk of failure, and many of them do fail as a result of mounting debt. Can you spell Chapter 7-11?

I will grant the Rebs that there is some historical correlation between a budget surplus and the onset of recession and between a budget deficit and recovery from recession. But, the question is, how far down this road do we go before we come to the curve we can’t negotiate? How much more of this load can we carry before we topple over? In 2005, we spent $352 billion just paying the interest on a debt that now amounts to $27,400 for every person in the country; $81,000 for every working person. The interest burden today is about the same as the entire debt when I graduated from high school in 1966.

The idea of needing to elect a Dim in order to achieve greater fiscal responsibility, at least in terms of a more balanced budget, is a bit of a trip down the rabbit hole. It’s as though our two political parties have worked so hard at being the opposite of each other that they have somehow switched sides in some strange reverse undulation that can only be seen if the videotape is played back in ultra-slow motion.

Of course the elephant and the jackass in the room is a mutual inability to cut government spending in a responsible manner. In that regard, the Dims can only see the Department of Defense and the Rebs can only see the Department of Health and Human Services. Neither of them can see the pig in the room. But, that’s another subject.

Once again I feel the swelling desire to declare myself a political independent so that I’m no longer identified with any of these animals. That would leave me identified with the disaffected, disillusioned and dismayed, which is a group that, try as they will, doesn’t seem to know how to throw much of a party.