Grown-Up Conversation Needed

One element of this past election rests in the fact that our elected officials have spent vast amounts of public monies we don’t have and are stretching the financial house of this nation to its limit. Like a family with maxed out credit cards, the piper is due and we have little money to pay up. Many incumbents fell from office due to the growing frustration this held over the electorate.

The debt commission was a good start, a beginning to a much-needed conversation. However in reality, it was only as its name states, a commission, unable to enact law, pass legislation, or guide policy. Many viewed this spectacle with cynicism and felt the Washington establishment was setting up a straw man to blame all tough decisions on and seek political cover, “blame the commission, not me.” When the commission couldn’t even get a supermajority needed to recommend to congress, it was a sign that this was going to be rough going.

This January a new congress will be sworn in and the current administration will have a new team to deal with across town, one issue they’ll have to man-up to is this growing debt: a grown-up conversation will have to take place calling for some form of reduced spending and fiscal sanity. You don’t have to have a graduate degree in finance from an Ivy League institution to know that the path we tread will lead to utter ruin: collapsed dollar, hyperinflation, crashed markets, and the inevitable bogey-man China, looming over this country like the Greek Sword of Damocles, hanging over the throne by a thread, the slightest shift in winds would cause it to fall ending whatever lies below.

The fact is that we need to spend less, tax less, and get an intrusive government to back off our lives, stop feeding the beast. Hopefully the new crop of conservative leaders will step up to the plate and act as grown-ups, make difficult but necessary decisions, and get this country back on the right course for stability and long-term economic growth.