The Federal Government is by far the largest “business” in the US. We define “business” as any organization that uses resources to accomplish specific objectives. In the world of government, it is the matching of tax revenues to the needs of the country and its citizens. Except for the 1990’s almost all of the last 100 years the US has operated in a deficit position–for one reason or another. In many cases we had no choice. Wars, natural disasters, COVID and many other temporary calamities forced us to borrow to make ends meet. But now we seemed to have become accustomed to living in debt.
Creating or even increasing debt is not in and of itself a failure because things happen beyond our control. But we need to re-introduce a degree of fiscal responsibility. The National Debt now stands at $28.3 trillion. It is now 128% of the annual value of ALL goods and services (GDP) produced every year in the US. By contrast, in 1960, it was 53% of our “GDP”- gross domestic. product.
As we see Stimulus Bills passed, the Infrastructure Bill and other major legislation being considered, we need to realize that not only does money not grow on trees—we now must borrow money to buy those trees. Our point is: recovering from COVID is no excuse for every special interest group to start shouting “we want” just because the US Treasury vault has been opened. We must be selective about our re-investment in the economy and work toward an eventual return on whatever stimulus investments are made. Think at least “a zero sum game” where the National Debt is temporarily increased with a strategy for payback from those expenditures. Any other expenditure strategy can and will prove disastrous in the long run.
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