OPINION:
Anyone with a lick of common sense will tell you that when you are in a hole, you need to quit digging. Continuing to dig will only create a larger problem. Do schools teach this?
Recently, even President Obama’s national debt commission told him that his continuing spending orgy is digging America into a gigantic fiscal hole.
Next year, America’s total debt is expected to exceed $14 trillion. Each American’s share of that debt totals just short of $50,000. If Fedzilla would be honest and put all the figures on the table, we would see that we are in debt more than $100 trillion because of the financial obligations for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
That’s $100 trillion. One hundred percent predictable, 100 percent preventable.
This gigantic level of borrowing and spending is unsustainable by any measure, by any means. The only real reason Fedzilla would do such a thing would be that those currently in charge want to destroy America and turn us into a Third World nation. And the only possible explanation I can come up with is the admission that there have always been bad people who actually wish such horrors. Apparently, America is being run by just such bad people.
Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Mr. Obama’s debt commission and a Democrat, told a meeting of the National Governors Association, “This debt is like a cancer. It is truly going to destroy the country from within.”
Mr. Bowles also said that if we continue with this kamikaze borrowing and spending, Americans by 2020 will pay $2 trillion a year just for the interest on the debt.
If that news weren’t bad enough, Tom Bell, chairman of the board of directors for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, stated, “For the first time in my 40 years of observation, our free-enterprise system is truly at risk. If we allow Congress and the administration to spend, we’re setting ourselves up to be the next Greece.”
So there you have it. America is in a deep financial hole. President Obama’s solution to this hole: Keep borrowing and spending. Dig, baby, dig.
We shouldn’t expect anything different from a president and administration who don’t have a clue about how private industry works or how Fedzilla’s policies stifle growth. At least from my research, I still can’t find anyone on the president’s closest team who has actually started a successful business.
I can, however, find Che Guevara and Mao Zedong fans. Phenomenal.
While I believe that capitalism is the strongest man-made force on the planet, I don’t believe the American economy can grow its way out of this mountain of self-inflicted debt, especially with Mr. Obama’s insane economic policies, which seek to punish businesses (thereby limiting job creation) instead of enacting policies that would cause businesses to grow and our economy to catch fire.
So how do we get out of this financial mess, if at all?
The very first thing we need to do is elect a fiscally conservative House and Senate this fall to serve as a dam against the Fedzilla tsunami of spending. Then we need to hold them accountable.
We absolutely must re-engage the “we the people” part of this American experiment in self-government.
We need tax relief across the board, from businesses to individuals. Nothing will get the economy moving faster than keeping money in the hands of American businesses and people who earned it. America should have the most pro-business tax structure on the planet. We do not.
My home state of Texas has the best economy in America. Interestingly, Texas has no corporate income tax, capital-gains tax or personal income tax. Don’t tell me that reducing taxes across the board will not put people back to work. Plus, my governor shoots coyotes. What does yours do?
The death tax should be eliminated permanently, capital gains slashed to next to nothing, and the George W. Bush tax cuts made permanent.
We need a fiscally conservative candidate for president in 2011 who will commit to cutting the size of Fedzilla by 25 percent over his first term and putting the savings toward eliminating the debt. Cutting spending is Job 1, 2 and 3.
We need much less government, not more of it. We must be willing to cut spending drastically and commit to putting all Fedzilla programs and agencies on the chopping block to be trimmed to the bone or made permanently extinct.
We need politicians who will stand firm on balancing the budget and putting their money where their mouths are. All others must be removed from office.
Much ado has been made about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There surely is not an American who has not heard about the spill, watched the oil gush nonstop from the pipe from the undersea cameras. We need the same laser focus on the national debt.
We have amonumental task in front of us - possibly the largest problem the nation has ever faced. Either we commit to doing what we can to fix it and recognize that whatever we do is going to be painful, or we go under. The stakes have never been higher.
Ted Nugent is an unstoppable American rock ’n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is author of “Ted, White & Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns and Rock ’N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).
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