Tag: spending

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

$800 Billion Gorilla

It somehow didn’t come up.

Last week, when President Barack Obama met with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, there was reportedly no discussion of the fact that our country owes China over $800 billion. 

Just suppose you owed someone $800 bucks … or $800,000. Do you think it could affect the relationship?

What about nearly a trillion dollars?

The Obama Administration just announced that American-​Chinese relations are “at an all-​time high.” But a story in the Washington Post compared our relationship with China to the nuclear stalemate of the Cold War, known as “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD. We’re dependent on them for future loans; they’re dependent on us to pay back old loans and new.

Kenneth Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution explained that “the Chinese can pull the rug out from under our economy only if they want to pull the rug out from under themselves.”

Reassuring? Not very. 

Why have we allowed a foreign power to gain such leverage over us? 

Because our politicians cannot — will not — limit their yearly spending to the trillion-​plus dollars in revenue from American taxpayers.

When it comes to debt, China’s tyrants  have taken better care of their country than our politicians have of ours. But we needn’t cede them control. Far better simply to stop borrowing billions from Beijing. 

How? Slash spending. If our politicians can’t do it for us, maybe they can do it for their Chinese allies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall

Ionosphere Laughter

Government is a business — a big business, employing more people than any other. It dominates by regulating, restricting, taxing and subsidizing. 

Government is also “too big to fail,” which is why, increasingly, politicians and public employee union bosses have ascended to the top of the heap of a growing army of competing lesser groups, always asking — no, demanding — more money. 

This growing sector depends not on the decisions of dispersed customers and donors and investors, but on decisions concentrated in Washington, and, to a lesser extent, the state capital … and city hall. 

The federal boys splurge far over their revenues — by the trillions, beyond the Ionosphere — courtesy of foreign creditors and the printing press. Governments at the state and local level tend to be more restrained, existing nearly on the same level as the rest of society, in a sort of Stratosphere (if not Troposphere) of finance. 

Indeed, they are constitutionally forced to balance budgets, can be limited in their power to tax, and are not allowed to print money. Often, they must even ask voters for permission to borrow. 

Add on the initiative and referendum, and we can gain some control over governments closest to home. 

Not so at the federal level, where often the only effective response to government corruption and excess is a sort of recycling program by late-​night comedians. 

This makes our laughter at national politicians a tad bittersweet. Or just bitter.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.