The past two years have brought America and the world to a place where many people feel as though they have been thrust into some kind of an alternate reality. A reality where lies are mandated truth, enemies are called friends, ‘following the science’ means not following the science, cowardly leadership is called valor, and tyranny is used to expand freedom.
Sounds a lot like The Twilight Zone, doesn’t it? It actually sounds a lot like a whole season of the series.
So it is no wonder that in the midst of this orchestrated chaos, yet another critical issue appears on the immediate horizon. What is this issue I speak of? It is the looming debt ceiling and what Congress is going to do about the prospect that America could default on its debts very soon.
The Debt Ceiling Is About to Crash Down on America, and WE are Paying for it!
However, if the debt ceiling is raised or suspended, under any circumstances, the clock on the debt bomb just slows down. Sooner or later, we or likely our children, will reap what our government has sown, and it won’t be pretty.
The debt ceiling must be raised only under certain conditions
In April of 2019, under the previous incarnation of this journal, I published an article about the dangers of the exploding National Debt, likening it to a “ticking time bomb.” At the time, the National Debt was ‘officially’ about 22 trillion dollars, give or take a trillion or so.
Also at that time, the federal government was constrained by a legal barrier known as the “debt ceiling” that prevented it from going beyond the limit of 22 trillion in debt. However, later in 2019, a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling was passed, allowing the government to borrow more money to finance the bloated budget.
The two-year suspension ended on July 31st, bringing the debt ceiling legally back into play.
The debt cap was paused for two years in August 2019, as part of a budget deal in Congress. Democrats, with a slim majority in both chambers, have yet to outline a plan to either increase the limit or suspend it again. Without action, the U.S. is on a path to default as early as October. That outcome has been avoided in debt-ceiling crises since the 1980s, although the federal government has sometimes been forced to shut down until a deal could be reached.
The new ceiling is fixed at 22 trillion, plus the money budgeted during the suspension, 6.5 trillion dollars, making the total 28.5 trillion dollars. America’s national debt is now 28.5 trillion dollars, and even that inconceivable number tells but a small part of the story.
To help grasp this, I refer to my piece from 2019 linked above.
The official National Debt is now quoted as over 22 trillion dollars! How much money is that? Think of it this way. If you had just 1 trillion dollars and you spent 1 million dollars every day, it would take you almost 3000 years to spend it.
Multiply it 22 times and that is how much the United States of America owes a lot of other nations and financial institutions aka, banks around the globe. Now for some really bad news, this means the people of the United States owe that money because the taxpayers ultimately supply the funds.
This means that each taxpayer in America owes approximately 250,000 dollars to places including China through its state-controlled institutions of finance. Here comes the worst news of all; 22 trillion is only a small part of the real National Debt.
That’s because the official dollar amount does not include America’s unfunded liabilities. Unfunded liabilities are those items the Federal government must pay for by American law.
By far the largest and most significant of these are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Together they currently total more than 50 trillion dollars. When added to the Debt, the total becomes slightly more than 73 trillion dollars… for the moment.
The final figure also includes items such as Federal pensions for workers and elected officials and interest paid on the Debt. The grand total of America’s real debt is about 130 trillion dollars!
This means each American taxpayer owes about 1 million dollars of the real debt as it exists today. So, what do you say, fellow taxpayer? Got an extra million to chip in for poor old Uncle Sam? Yeah, me neither.
One of the comments left in response to that article suggested that worrying about the debt was much fuss about nothing. The commenter referenced one of the principles of so-called modern monetary theory, which postulates that because American has sovereignty over its currency, if necessary, we can simply print or render in digital form, the money to pay our debts. Viola, the problem is solved.
The problem with this concept is this: If we can just conjure the money somehow, why do we pay taxes at all? Why doesn’t the Treasury just produce the cash to pay for all of our government programs without even having to borrow from a bank or a foreign nation?
They don’t do these things because they know that it would produce massive devaluation of the dollar via inflation and the entities America owes the money to would not accept those dollars. So the American taxpayer will continue to be crushed under the weight of this insurmountable debt.
The Left in Congress is more than willing to raise or suspend the debt ceiling basically forever for their Marxist agenda, and the establishment RINOs have no qualms about going along. However, conservatives in Congress have a golden opportunity to begin turning things around.
This idea came to my attention from Steve Bannon on his broadcast on rumble.com. Republicans must insist that they will not sign off on raising the debt ceiling unless certain conditions are met.
The principal condition is stopping all illegal immigration into America, particularly on the southern border. This includes both strict enforcement of immigration law and the completion of the wall spanning the southern border itself.
Politically, this is a no-lose proposition for Republicans and moderate Democrats. If the Dems agree (unlikely), then at least we can progress toward a real secure border.
A secure border will help stem the tide of government spending and perhaps work toward some action to eventually reduce government spending. Moreover, it will halt the invasion of those who mean to do us harm, thus benefitting in more ways than economic.
However, as I expect, should the Dems not agree, Republicans must hold firm even to the point of the dreaded government “shutdown.” If prior shutdowns are any indication, the D.C. crowd and other Leftists will howl while the rest of us barely notice anything at all.
In fact, a shutdown is likely just what the country needs right now. After all, doing nothing is about the only thing big government is good at!
The fact is that debt of this size is impossible to repay and raising the ceiling itself won’t change that. However, national insolvency can be avoided for now and that is a good thing.
It is also a good reminder that man, even with the best of intentions, can never do what God has already done, cancel our impossible debt of sin by paying for it with Jesus’ death.
Col 2:13,14 – And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
D.T. Osborn
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