For decades, Republicans and Democrats in Washington have been spending like there’s no tomorrow.
Well, guess what just showed up at our door? Tomorrow. And now America has an appointment with fiscal catastrophe. Insolvency. Hyper-inflation. And you can throw in some major social and political upheaval, too.
It’s the political event of our time. The death spiral of a welfare state. And it will hit several developed nations in the months and years ahead.
As the riots in Greece play on their TV’s, our leaders in Washington continue to spend and spend more. After all, federal debt as a percentage of GDP today “only” stands at around 60 percent. Although, when you add in unfunded liabilities it’s closer to 90 percent.
Greece started to melt down when its debt to GDP ratio hit 115 percent. America, on its present course, will hit that level in 5 years, 150 percent in 10 years, and 300 percent by 2050.
And for you conservatives who think this debt was only a Democratic creation, wake up. George W. Bush added 5 trillion dollars to the national debt. And according to the book “Conservatives Betrayed” by conservative giant Richard Viguerie, the Bush White House and Republican Congressional leaders used the very same Obama/Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid hardball tactics to ram through Bush’s harebrained 8-trillion dollar Medicare expansion, which critics have condemned as an expensive vote-buying scheme cooked up by Karl Rove. Read Viguerie’s account of the House vote on the Bush Medicare expansion bill in 2003:
“Most house votes last 15 minutes. This one was kept open by House leaders for three hours overnight, resulting in a final vote at 5:53 in the morning....the GOP leadership kept hammering away at conservative resistance until it got the votes it needed. Conservatives voting “no” were restrained from leaving the floor of the House until they could be pressured into changing their votes. “Door men” were stationed at exits to make sure they couldn’t escape. (Republican Congresswoman) Jo Ann Emerson (of Missouri) had to hide on the Democratic side, crouching down to avoid being seen by the Republican search team. Columnist Robert Novak reported that “after (Republican Congressman) Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, (Republican Congressman) Duke Cunningham and other Republicans taunted him by saying Smith’s son (who wanted to run for congress) was ‘dead meat. ‘" (Cunningham would later go to prison for tax evasion, conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud.)
It was an act of madness by Bush’s big government conservative movement.
But now, the Obama administration, with its corporatist bailouts and Obamacare, is running it up at an even faster clip.
And so we here are, staring into the abyss which has already swallowed Greece. America will follow if we don't change course.