The title of this post is something of a misnomer because the American Monetary Association can see no plausible way that the US government will ever be able to extricate itself from the current mountain of debt, with more being added to the pile very day, sort of like a confetti machine blowing a constant stream of IOU’s onto the desks of Helicopter Ben Bernanke and Barack Hussein Obama. There are a handful of insurmountable hurdles of which we have no faith that this administration or any administration that may come along in the future, will ever be able to overcome.
Lack of will or motivation. Our leaders lack both the political will and motivation to ever take a serious stab at reducing the national debt. Why? We’re not sure but either the American voters are the dumbest herd of sheep ever to walk the planet or there’s a strange sort of vapor confined to the specific area around Washington DC that turns healthy brains into self-absorbed mush. Politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, don’t want to reduce the debt – the occasional grandstanding speech by a panicky short-time incumbent notwithstanding. But get serious. He doesn’t really want to reduce the debt. He just wants to go back to Washington so he can sniff some more of the funny gas.
Making a list. To get out of debt requires our leaders to make a list. This will be the toughest list they have ever produced because on it are the government expenditures listed in order of importance. The iron clad rule is you can’t spend more than you take in, which means somewhere on the list goes a heavy red line. Every program, special interest, and boondoggle project below the line gets no funding. Considering that the current costs of Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, and defense pretty much annihilate the tax coffers, creating a list like this would require more intestinal fortitude than exists in the US government collectively. Next item!
Symbolic Step. To prove they are serious about reducing and eventually eliminating the national debt could start with making a symbolic reduction that illustrates how serious the problem is and how determined they are to correct it. Here’s a good one. How about all members of the administration, House of Representatives, and Senate reduce their pay to the national median immediately (somewhere around $50,000) and leave it there until the budget is balanced and debt gone?
Yes, all things considered, we expect that the preceding will happen when the calendar rolls around to the twelfth of never.
The American Monetary Association Team
Flickr / koalazymonkey