I am heartbroken over the financial struggles and employment losses of so many Americans because our government shut down our nation's economic engine. But I also struggle believing the only answer or remedy to those fiscal hardships should be solved by Congress incurring trillions of dollars more to our national debt. Stimulus relief also places greater future financial burdens upon our nation and posterity.
As further economic relief talks hit a stalemate in Congress this past week, the Trump administration is considering "a number of options" to help Americans, including four executive orders the president signed over the weekend to bring relief to the unemployed and others. I commend President Trump for doing something since Congress can't get its act together to do anything.
But the question that continues to haunt many of us patriots is: "Where is all this stimulus money coming from?" Answer: It's being charged on the federal credit card called national debt. It's present balance due is $26 trillion dollars, and experts say another relief package would push it over $30 trillion.
Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explained how the costs and tentacles of more national debt are far more reaching than in previous generations: "Who is going to lend the federal government all this money? Politicians promising trillions in new spending seem unconcerned with the question. Financial markets, which are trading ten-year Treasuries at interest rates of 0.7 percent and 30-year Treasuries at interest rates of 1.3 percent, don't seem worried, either. Many analysts see a world awash in excess savings and a Federal Reserve dedicated to pouring liquidity into the market. Yet borrowing $24 trillion (or more) over the decade would create a nearly unprecedented burden: The debt held by the public would rise from 79 percent to 128 percent of GDP, in the largest debt surge since World War II. But when World War II ended in 1945, the debt burden quickly declined; our present national debt is set to continue rising steeply for decades, because Social Security and Medicare face a 30-year cash shortfall of more than $100 trillion."
Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., was exactly right when he said about the federal government's relief in the form of debt: "This troubles me greatly, but all I see is more spending. So how high do we get? We are going to continue to spend until the markets say enough is enough and nobody buys the bonds, and then we have the cliff that we go off of. … And unfortunately, there's no conversation in Washington, D.C., about how to pay this money back."
In 1986, the national debt was $2.1 trillion dollars. (Remember when people thought President Reagan was going to bankrupt our nation by escalating military expenditures and debt?). In that same year, a Washington resident sent a letter to the editor at the New York Times trying to get a grasp on just how big a trillion dollars really is. The article was titled, "Just how long is a trillion seconds?"
In it, author Dorothy C. Morrell from Seattle explained a trillion in terms of time. She wrote:
I asked myself, why not think of it in terms of seconds? A trillion seconds would have to be years, probably many years. I made a wild guess. As it turned out, I wasn't close. I found that 1,000 seconds ago was equal to almost 17 minutes. It would take almost 12 days for a million seconds to elapse and 31.7 years for a billion seconds. Therefore, a trillion seconds would amount to no less than 31,709.8 years. A trillion seconds ago, there was no written history. The pyramids had not yet been built. It would be 10,000 years before the cave paintings in France were begun.
Was I alone in not knowing how long ago a trillion seconds was? I asked some of my neighbors what they would say if they were told they could have $1 trillion in one-dollar bills, so long as they agreed to initial each bill. Their answers were very similar. "No!" they said. When I asked why, they said, almost without exception, "Because it would take me the rest of my life!"
And when we consider today that the national debt is 15 times what it was in 1986, we must revise the analogy by confessing it would take multiple generations to sign $30 trillion of national debt! Can we really call stimulus monies financial "relief" when they pile up and postpone a heavier financial burden upon future generations?
Dorothy finished her letter to the editor with these practical words: "We must all of us, especially our elected officials, stop thinking of a trillion seconds as merely a long time ago and a trillion dollars as just a lot of money."
So, what would you do for your loved ones if you were given $1 trillion dollars to help them out but you also knew the money was only a loan that their kids and grandkids had to pay back with interest? And what if you additionally knew that a financer (vassal overlord) of a portion of this loan was none other than the Communist regime of China? Would you even give your loved ones a dime or rather work hard to find other solutions to help them?
In my New York Times bestseller, "Black Belt Patriotism," one of the most important chapters to me is "Stop the Nightmare of National Debt." In it, I give America's founders' wisdom about fiscal responsibility, especially by the federal government. Their advice needs to be immediately heard and heeded again in Washington, especially in regard to national debt.
Despite the Revolutionary War placing our new republic under a great weight of debt, George Washington told the House of Representatives in 1793: "No pecuniary consideration is more urgent than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt; on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of the time more valuable."
Washington also wrote in 1799 to James Welch, "To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones."
John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson from Paris in 1780: "I think we shall do no great things in borrowing [money], unless that system or some other, calculated to bring things to some certain and steady standard, succeeds."
Thomas Jefferson also wrote to Fulwar Skipwith in 1787, "the maxim of buying nothing but what we had money in our pockets to pay for … [is] a maxim, which, of all others, lays the broadest foundation for happiness."
Despite that the national debt nearly doubled under President James Madison, largely due to the war of 1812, the so-called "Father of the Constitution" said in remorse, "I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit." (He also described national debts as "moral obligations" as far back in Federalist Paper No. 43.)
President James Monroe, who shrank the national debt by one-third, said, "The vast amount of vacant lands, the value of which daily augments, forms an additional resource of great extent and duration. These resources, besides accomplishing every other necessary purpose, put it completely in the power of the United States to discharge the national debt at an early period."
John Quincy Adams, who also shrank the national debt by one-third, said, "The plain state of the fact appears to me to be that the load of taxation to pay the interest on the national debt is greater than the nation can bear, and that the only possible remedy will be a composition with the public creditors, or an authoritative reduction of the debt in one form or another."
Andrew Jackson made this passionate presidential commitment that I wish every president and representative would make today: "I stand committed before the country to pay off the national debt at the earliest practicable moment. This pledge I am determined to redeem." (In January 1835, the national debt was paid off!)
In 1986, the national debt was already $2 trillion. Today, it's $26 trillion and rapidly climbing, according to the U.S. National Debt Clock. If we do nothing about it, it is projected to be $41 trillion in 2030!
I conclude with the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, who reminded us of the best reasons and resources to stop the oppressive tyranny of debt: you and me. He wrote to Samuel Kercheval in 1816, "To preserve [the] independence [of the people], we [the people] must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
Contact your representatives today and let them know how you feel about the astronomical amounts of national debt being placed like a ginormous ball and chain upon you, your loved ones and your posterity.
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