The Budget Battle Royale
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 10:13PM As we go into the weekend, the media hype over the looming budget crisis has reached its crescendo; well at least I hope it has peaked. The budget battle has grabbed headlines for more than a month as Congress and the White House squabble over how and what to cut. The media and both sides are scrambling to assign blame over the country’s budgetary problems. I believe a bit of perspective is in order; otherwise the tendency to get caught up in the insanity could be overwhelming.
The first aspect we need to realize is that this budget problem is nothing new, unique to this current Congress or this year. The truth is that this current crisis could have been averted last year if the White House and the previous Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi, failed to even propose a budget for this year. They felt they had bigger issues to deal with than to actually fund our government. Then after the election all they could muster up was a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government until the new Congress took over and they could be blamed for the problem. Now the White House and the Democrats want claim that the Republicans do not want to compromise on how much to cut from the budget. Maybe if they had done their sworn duty last year we wouldn’t be locked in a battle today that threatens to shut down the government.
Our country is over $14 trillion in debt and it is rapidly climbing. Allow me to say that again, we are $14,000,000,000,000.00 in debt! Believe it or not, I do not blame the Democrats for our debt. Nor do I blame the President for it, and I don’t assign blame to the Republicans. This outrageous debt is all of our fault! Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike have continually elected economic idiots into Congress and the Oval Office. Both Democrats and Republicans in Washington DC have spent as if there was no tomorrow. Deficit spending has become the norm in DC and the hypocritical bureaucrats rail against each other about their special interests, all the while funneling billions of dollars to their own benefactors. The politicians have realized that the public has started to wake up but they also know that the general public cannot comprehend the amount of money that is being thrown around.
Allow me to put our national debt in terms that we can understand. $14 trillion is so large a figure that if you used $100 bills and laid them end to end, you could circle the earth nearly 5324 times. The earth’s circumference is 24,901.55 miles and the $100 bill is roughly 6 inches long. Here is another analogy many have already heard but it bears repeating again. If I gave you $1 million to spend every day, you would have to live more than 38,356 years to be able to spend all $14 trillion!
I realize that these numbers may not mean anything to some on the left, so I thought I would put it into terms that they may understand. For those who are pro-abortion let’s talk in terms that you will understand. Since 1973, when Roe vs. Wade made abortion legal in the U.S., there have been an estimated 52 million abortions performed in the United States, on average around 3749 per day. To reach our magical number of 14 trillion abortionists would have to work overtime to kill 1,009,372,747 unborn babies. For the mathematically challenged, that is more than 1 billion dead children per day for 38 years.
For those that worship at the altar of Al Gore and his Global Warming alarmism, we shall put it in terms of bovine flatulence. There are approximately 1.2 billion cows in the world and they are daily emitting in the range of 25-130 gallons of methane gas. Since you are an alarmist we will use the higher number of 130 gallons per day. That is 156 billion gallons of methane every day from cows passing gas. To equal our 14 trillion number, the cows would need to increase their population to more than 107 billion. Are starting to smell how bad our situation has become?
Our debt problem was created because we allowed our leaders to spend without any restrictions. We collectively bought into the lie that they were looking out for our best interest. We allowed them to spend us into oblivion all the while screaming that we deserved these government “benefits”. After all we pay taxes, we are “entitled” to it. The simple fact remains that we have no money to pay for the “benefits” that which we have grown accustomed. Our Founders built a country that was governed by a small and very limited government. We now have a government that believes it is their duty to regulate and control every aspect of our lives. The skeptics out there scoff at such a notion, but how do you explain a government that tells you what you can eat and how and when you are to die?
Now is the time that our debt problem is resolved. There is no quick fix to our budget woes, but now is the time to start cutting and fixing our budget. Kicking the can down the street for another few years is no longer an option and it is up to us, our government’s employer to demand that they fix the mess that they created.
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