The Voice of the Community Since 1909, Serving Moorcroft and Pine Haven, Wyoming
The Voice of the Community Since 1909, Serving Moorcroft and Pine Haven, Wyoming
Imagine you’re a business owner. You’re getting ready to leave town for a few weeks, so you leave your most trusted employees in charge of the place while you’re gone. A vote was held among everyone in the office, and it was generally agreed that these individuals were the overall most qualified to keep the business running smoothly in your absence.
Weeks pass by, and you return only to find absolute disaster. Not only has your business been plunged into bankruptcy, but is now in $23 trillion of debt, and plans were made without your approval to spend $2 trillion more over the next two years.
This is the reality the American people face in the wake of the trillion-dollar disaster shoved through the Senate and signed by the President earlier this month. The Republican establishment (in what seems to be an absolute determination to placate the House Democrats) signed off on HR3877, otherwise known as the “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019”.
As if suspending the public debt limit for two more years wasn’t bad enough, the new law includes a colossal $1.37 trillion budget for fiscal year 2020, along with $320 billion more in military spending throughout FY 2020 and 2021.
Perhaps a more appropriate name would have been that used by Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY): “A Bill to Kick the Can Down the Road and for Other Purposes”. Indeed, like countless “bipartisan” deals before it, the BBA perpetuates Washington’s longstanding tradition of drowning the next generation in our own economic failures, upending many of the spending caps included in the Budget Control Act of 2011.
Because the phrase “the next generation” gets passed around so often, however, it’s very easy to forget exactly what this means. This is our children we’re talking about (and our grandchildren after them). It is precisely for this reason that it should infuriate every American — young and old — how our politicians talk a big game during campaign season about cutting taxes and reducing spending, but turn their backs on us as soon as they step foot into Washington.
Our 40th president Ronald Reagan summed it up perfectly: “We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”
And now, with Millennials poised to become the largest voting bloc in America within just a few short years, it seems more likely every day that we will be passing the torch soon, and with it, the burden of a debt that can never be repaid.
In the same way that a business can only achieve success if the owner keeps his or her employees held accountable, our government can only function if we, the people, hold our representatives responsible in the same way. The political elites of the Washington machine are our employees, not our owners.
