All of the commentary in recent weeks has been focused on the atrocity the Democrats like to call health care “reform.” But the real story is the fact that ObamaCare may be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back. Contrary to the lies we have been fed, far from reducing the deficit, this monstrous bill could push the nation into bankruptcy.
All of the commentary in recent weeks has been focused on the atrocity the Democrats like to call health care “reform.” But the real story is the fact that ObamaCare may be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back. Contrary to the lies we have been fed, far from reducing the deficit, this monstrous bill could push the nation into bankruptcy.
Let’s look at the facts. The National Debt currently stands at $11 Trillion. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has stated that figure is going to DOUBLE in the next ten years. Please keep in mind that, although the CBO is nominally non-partisan, it reports to the party in power. So, if anything, its estimates are conservative. Many economists believe that the debt could actually double in as little as five years.
To put this in perspective, this means that every American family (based an average family of four) would have to donate $250,000 to Uncle Sam to get our nation out of debt. I have spoken on this subject to large crowds and asked how many planned to make their contribution within the next 12 months. No one ever raises their hand.
Next, keep in mind that the CBO figures do NOT include a penny for the health care bill. Many assume that they do, but since they bill changes from day to day as the Democrat leadership has to bribe their members (often to the tune of billions of dollars in future costs) to vote for it, it is impossible to “score” the bill accurately. Obama claims it will cost less than $1 Trillion, but he conveniently forgets to mention that many of the biggest costs won’t kick in until after he leaves office. The real costs will probably exceed $2.5 Trillion according to conservative estimates.
And don't forget the Liberal’s next big agenda items: The Cap and Tax (Energy) Bill and “Immigration Reform”. Although Obama promised “No New Taxes” during his campaign, the huge energy bill will cost every American family an estimated $3,900 every year in energy taxes hidden in their energy bills. As far as the immigration bill, there is no way of knowing the exact cost of adding millions of illegal immigrants to the welfare rolls and paying for their health care costs. But there is no question that together these two bills will add many trillions of dollars to the National Debt.
So, what is a Trillion dollars, anyway? We used to get upset when we heard about our representatives passing bills that cost us Billions of dollars. But in less than two years we have become blasé about spending bills in the Trillions. We shouldn’t be.
If you bound 10,000 $1 bills tightly in bundles you would have a stack of money 333 feet high worth $1 Million. $1 Billion worth of $1 bills would tower 63 miles in the sky. $1 Trillion worth of $1 bills would make a stack 63,000 miles high. Put another way:
A stack of $11 Trillion dollar bills (the amount of our current National debt) would reach from Washington, DC, to the Moon and back, with more than $3 Trillion left over.
Let’s do some math together. (I know, this is depressing, but the Bible says you shouldn’t go into battle without knowing your enemy. And debt is the enemy of our national prosperity.) Currently 18% of our national budget goes to pay interest only on the national debt. Why don’t we pay a little extra on the principal? That would be smart, wouldn’t it? The fact is, the political will isn’t there in either party. There are way too many pork projects to be funded. Pork pays for re-election. Paying down the debt doesn’t.
Now, as long as things remained as they are, we might be OK. If the National Debt remained as the same level, interest rates didn’t change, and we kept finding buyers for our debt instruments, we might muddle through. But as we’ve seen already, things are NOT going to remain as they are. Three big problems face us:
1) As we have noted, our National Debt is going to increase – dramatically. We have gotten complacent as a nation, but we need to wake up. Our debt has never been anywhere near this big, and it is about to get totally out of control, unless we jerk our politicians up short.
2) Interest rates are at a very low point. The Fed Funds Rate is currently below 1%. It has been 6 times that in the last decade. Even thought the Federal Reserve is trying to keep rates low (for obvious reasons), it can’t control them forever.
3) We’re seeing buyers for our nation’s debt instruments fade into the woodwork. Communist China, which currently owns about one fourth of the debt held by foreigners, has recently criticized the US for its debt load, and has failed to buy our Treasury instruments as it has done in the past.
The Democrats didn’t have the votes to pass ObamaCare in the manner called for in the Constitution because many in their party feared their constituents. The majority of Americans not only hate the bill, they are ready to “throw the bums out” of Congress. In a recent Fox News poll, when given the choice of ousting ALL members of Congress or keeping them all, 68% of Democrats and Republicans said to get rid of them, while only 20% said to let them stay. Interestingly, when only Democrats votes were counted, the numbers were 52% and 32%, even though Democrats have absolute control in Congress.
With these kind of polling numbers, and with many Dems afraid to vote for the bill, Obama and Nancy Pelosi resorted to fraud that will cost them dearly in the next two elections. They rammed through the vote in a deceptive way that let their members vote for it and still claim they didn’t vote for it! I won’t waste space here explaining the fraud because Fox and others have done a good job of it, and my focus here is the effect the bill will have on the debt.
Naturally Obama wants us to believe that this monumental spending bill will have a beneficial effect on our economy in the long run. Every president with a huge entitlement bill to sell has tried to sell it that way over the years. In 1965 LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson) sold Medicare by telling us it would only cost families in our nation $1.50 per month each. Today the unfunded liabilities of Medicare are over $57 Trillion – about $500,000 per American family.
The granddaddy of all entitlements, Social Security, has generated $43 Trillion in unfunded liabilities. Unfunded liabilities are bills that Congress doesn’t know how its going to pay – which means that our grandchildren are going to have to figure out how to pay them. Here’s how FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) sold this program in 1935:
"It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will
take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.” (From the FDR Library – See LINK below.)
I was struck by a comment Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard made when the Dems passed the bill by a narrow margin. He said, “They have just bankrupted the United States.” I pray that he was wrong.
Dr. Tom Barrett has been an ordained minister for 30 years. He has written for local and national publications for most of his life, and has authored several non-fiction books. He has been interviewed on many TV and radio programs, and speaks at seminars nationwide. Tom is the editor and publisher of Conservative Truth, an email newsletter read by over fifty thousand weekly which focuses on moral and political issues from a Biblical viewpoint.
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