American Revolution Two

“To preserve independence…we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and Liberty, or profusion and servitude…” – Thomas Jefferson

Shut it down. Shut it all down. Raise your hand if you think we’d actually be better off continuing down this path of record deficits, printing money we don’t have, and spending ourselves into oblivion. The fact that we’re continuing to run the federal government without a budget is insulting, childish and quite frankly disgraceful. All the political bantering this week about a dreaded shutdown of the government would be laughable if it didn’t highlight how close we are to economic collapse.

The American people would be far better off if the government did shut down..at least for a while…and then began eliminating wasteful, failing and fraudulent programs. (Hello Amtrak, which hasn’t made a profit in 30 years.) Do you realize that one of the motivations behind the founders’ idea to relocate our nation’s capital to the area now known as the District of Columbia was to minimize the amount of time members of Congress spent there? It was originally a swamp! The idea of career politicians who lived off of ever expanding government bureaucracy was completely contradictory to the original plan and vision for a small, limited government with enumerated powers.

If anything, shutting the government down might give enough pause for members of Congress to realize that the American people – and those most recently elected largely because of the Tea Party – will not stand for the status quo any longer. That status quo is FLAT BROKE and sinking us ever deeper into astronomical debt. Consider the following:

• As the Patriot Post noted yesterday, the Treasury Department quietly noted this week that last month the Federal Government spent 8.2 times the amount of revenue it took in. Now imagine your family, or the average small business doing that. How long would that last before your property would be repossessed and your business shut down?

• February was even worse, posting the largest monthly deficit in history – $223 billion, according to CBO figures. That’s only one month, and for some perspective, was more than the deficit for all of 2007, which was $158 billion.

• According to Economist Mary Meeker, we’ve spent an average of eight percent per year more than we’ve taken in…for the past 15 years!

• Also according to Meeker, if the U.S. were a business, its 2010 structural operating loss would be  –$817 billion! Compare that to  –$78 billion just 15 years ago.

And the truly maddening part of all this is that we’re not even having the right conversations. “Cutting this” and “raising that” is not getting anywhere close to the core problem. At the heart of this debate should be how grossly unconstitutional the governance of our Federal establishment has become. The reason why we have $trillions of debt is because most of what the government does today is outside the bounds of Constitutional authority (read that statement again). If the Federal Government wasn’t illegally managing so many aspects of society, we wouldn’t be trying to collect such insane amounts of tax money to pay for it. Consider that 58% of our spending goes toward entitlements – ALL of which is unconstitutional! Think about it…And for even more context, please revisit Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to review the small number of powers Congress is supposed to wield.

Would anyone really miss it if the Fed shut down for a while? I’m all for it and I’m willing to bet that most Americans agree: Shut the monster down. Doing so might illumine the only realistic path forward and that is to drastically cut the size, scope and metastasizing control of the Federal government. The truly sad part is the degree to which so many Americans are so dependent on the the government (their fellow citizens) – which is the reason that we’re even having this debate. It’s called the “road to serfdom” and we’re fast approaching the destination. Our level of dependency and perpetual debt is nearing the tipping point, beyond which America will cease to be free, prosperous and the beacon of liberty to the world.