Debt Rant

“No pecuniary consideration is more urgent than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt.”

Those are the wise words of George Washington.  The Tea Party often relishes the opportunity of pointing towards what our Founding Fathers intended when making arguments for today.  The problem is that liberals like to manipulate the discussion with their normal wordplay and point to America’s going into debt to fund its early wars.  Alexander Hamilton was a proponent for the country having a manageable amount of national debt in order to control the money supply and to build up credit worthiness with foreign countries.  Some of his quotes in this regard often show up in liberal media and blogs to discredit Tea Party arguments that point towards Founding Fathers solutions.

I can tell you with great confidence that the Founding Fathers would not allow our country to default on it’s debt.  Nor is there any reason that we should.  There is enough tax revenue coming in that the government can fully meet our interest payments, and fully fund our military, medicare, and social security.  Anything said to the contrary is political rhetoric and gamesmanship.

The problems we face today are because we have too many career politicians who are well versed in getting the general public to dance to their tune.  We citizens hear buzz words like “compromise” and “class warfare”.  Of course they need to compromise.  Of course politicians on both sides rile up bases discussing class warfare.  But the common person walking down the street already knows that loopholes need closed in the tax structure at the national level.  We know that people should not be punished for success.  These are common sense ideas.  The problem is too many politicians become wealthy after getting to public office.  Lobbyists pay them to create loopholes.  Unions pay them to grant waivers.  And people who don’t want to work as hard as their neighbor vote for some to get more government handouts.  All of this is leads to a cynical society and begets more of the same.

Thomas Jefferson may have said it best and predicted all of this when he said, “A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering… And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”