This past June, Florida's Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill into law requiring welfare recipients to be tested for illicit substances. This popular legislation weeds Florida druggies out from the public dole. Given the idiocy demonstrated by the Ruling Class over the past several weeks, I've been thinking that Gov. Scott's novel legislation could find good use in D.C. There's obviously something being smoked in the halls of Congress.
For instance, you have to be high as a kite to think that any of the pending debt-ceiling proposals does anything to reduce our national debt – even in the long run. In fact, all of the conventional proposals increase our national debt by trillions of dollars over the next decade. No congressional plan actually cuts anything from our debt – it just slows the fatal increase.
In all fairness, some members of Congress pushing to extend the debt ceiling probably aren't high; they know exactly what they're doing: deceiving their constituents into thinking that reducing future years' deficits means debt reduction. They try to hide that the fact that within a decade our national debt will increase to well over $20 trillion. Even that number is impossibly optimistic as it depends on interest rates remaining at historic lows.
Like many other Americans, I'm sick and tired of being lied to by the D.C. establishment that will do anything to keep big government in place. Conservatives were lied to when George W. Bush campaigned on a limited-government platform but then exploded the growth and reach of the central government during his two terms. And we were lied to just earlier this year when our federal budget was supposed to cut billions from the prior year's wildly inflated expenditures. CBO projections later revealed this was all smoke and mirrors.
Leaders of both parties now claim that the debt ceiling must be increased to avoid default. But we're being lied to again. If Congress fails to increase the debt ceiling, there are sufficient revenues to meet our debt obligations.
Each and every month over the next year, the central government can reasonably expect to receive over $200 billion in federal revenues. Debt servicing amounts to less than $30 billion per month. This still leaves more than $170 billion per month to cover Social Security (currently $60 billion per month), leaving $110 billion per month for the military and other essential functions of the federal government.
Yes, there would absolutely be disruption if the ceiling is not increased. Some worry that the nation's triple-A credit rating would be lowered. Frankly, that credit rating is undeserved given our current debt structure, and the world's rating agencies know it. The rating is at risk no matter what happens over the next week.
Another concern is that Obama will get to choose how to allocate the limited federal revenues. Although he's constitutionally bound to service the debt, he may try to gain political traction by playing games in other areas such as cutting off seniors. That would be consistent with Obama's outrageous threat last month. If Obama chooses to play games with our seniors' health and welfare, he must be held directly responsible.
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So failure to increase the debt ceiling is not the preferred route (any debt-ceiling increase must be accompanied by real reductions in future debt). But it is the only answer to a completely out-of-touch Congress that, in the face of ubiquitous warning signs, chooses a course that continues to increase the debt by trillions over the next decade. If the ball continues to move in the wrong direction, we can't continue to play. It stops here.
Congress is either blind to our current circumstances or is hopelessly captive to the forces that have continued to march our nation toward fiscal collapse and internationalism, away from industry and sovereignty, and straight into the arms of the tyrant our founders did everything to protect us from. The federal government must be returned to its constitutional parameters.
Getting out of this mess is going to take time and will be painful. But the time is now.
Joe Miller was the 2010 Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Alaska. He is a West Point graduate and combat veteran from the first Gulf War. A former judge, Joe graduated from Yale Law School and was later awarded an advanced economics degree from the University of Alaska. He is presently chairman of the Western Representation PAC, Restoring Liberty Alaska PAC and Restoring Liberty Action Committee. Read more about Joe at http://facebook/JoeMillerAlaska and http://www.speakersaccess.com/joe-miller.