How Broken Is It?

“Why reward bad behavior?” Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)  said. “It’s a colossal waste of everybody’s time,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

These comments were made by Senators in the debate regarding the House approved budget deal that — once again — HAD to be passed to prevent another government shutdown. One would think these two Republican Senators were referencing all the senseless pork and unnecessary elements included in the bill under consideration. After all, this $500 Billion new law will increase the budget deficit by that exact amount. In other words, the U.S. will be forced to borrow every penny of that which means another half Trillion of debt piled on the already 20 Trillion we owe.

But no, these two GOP leaders were NOT griping about the huge spending in the budget deal. They were attacking Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) who demanded time on the floor to actually discuss the potentially disastrous deficit spending bill that Republicans promised Americans they would NOT do IF Americans in the 2016 election gave the GOP the White House, the House of Representatives, AND the Senate. The American voters did just that. And members of Congress — at least the majority of the House and the majority of the Senate who are Republicans — caved and once again went back on their promise to Americans.

Paul simply wanted to take time to discuss the bill and debate amendments necessary to edit this financial monstrosity under consideration at the time that is now law. Senators Cornyn and Thune were complaining about the time such discussions would waste. NO amendments were debated because none were allowed. After all, it is not acceptable for Americans to expect the well paid Congressionals who are supposed to vote the way their constituents voted in the past election. And those constituents were promised that Republicans — including Thune and Cornyn — were committed to reduce government spending and reverse the cycle of deficit spending that Democrats have consistently pushed on Americans over the last 8 years. Apparently Thune, Cornyn, and a majority of other Republicans feel their obligations to voting constituents does not include doing what they promised during their campaigns. Remember “Send us back to Washington and we’ll repeal Obamacare and slash the budget deficit?” Nothing but lip service.

What’s Next?

The debt limit and DACA — two ADDITIONAL hot topics from the 2016 campaign that carry with them promises given by campaigners that “should” bring the results of fulfilling those promises. Sadly, I doubt that is going to happen.

The debt limit certainly must be raised in a few weeks, regardless of what doing so will do to our children, grandchildren, and their children. Do not be fooled for a moment thinking that $20 Trillion is all the U.S. owes. Congressional members do not discuss their “unfunded” liabilities that total an additional $100 to $200 Trillion dollars. Those include Social Security, Medicare, federal government pensions, and pensions that the federal government “agreed” to guarantee — primarily those of members of “chosen” labor unions. Even though Americans for decades watch as billions of dollars are deducted from paychecks, and even thought those deductions that are earmarked for deposit in a trust fund to hold along with employer matching contributions, Congress decades ago began robbing that trust fund, to borrow those dollars to use for pet project spending. They simply pay those obligations when they come due by borrowing more money. Is that not the most egregious  thing you have ever heard? “Oh, we’ll just apply for and get another credit card and use the new credit card to pay what’s due on this old card.”

I don’t want to scare you, but there is not $200 Trillion dollars in circulation in total on the planet Earth!

What Then?

Sadly for our children and grandchildren there is little good that can happen from this practice. America can keep borrowing money from the Chinese for only so long. When China calls the loans due, America has no way of paying. “What can those we owe do to us?” There is some difference in this situation than a normal similar situation in everyday America. When one defaults on a loan on a car or a mortgage, the bank just seizes the car or the house, sells it, and uses the sale proceeds to payoff the loan. China could indeed declare us in default and make demand for the money, or they could seize the asset pledged to get that loan. But what asset does the U.S. put up for collateral for all those Treasury Notes we give to the Chinese as collateral? The only “there” there to protect the Chinese is the good faith and trust of the United States of America. And how good is that as collateral today?

Until Richard Nixon took the nation off the gold and silver backed currency system, U.S. creditors had something tangible that could be used as REAL collateral for our loans. When that happened, the U.S. dollar became a “fiat currency” — a currency like almost every country in the World that relies on the broad and often non-existent assets that country possesses. Imagine a scenario in which every dollar bill you hold has a dollar worth of gold or silver sitting in a federal vault at Fort Knox. Wouldn’t that make you feel better about that $20 Trillion in debt we now owe along with those unfunded liabilities? But now when the nation runs out of money, someone simply fires up the printing press, prints more dollars and Treasury Notes, sells them for real money, and goes further and further in debt.

But who pays those debts? American citizens, that’s who. It certainly is not our government. The only money it has is the money we pay in taxes. And of course you know we NEVER pay enough in taxes for the government’s needs — or so we are told. That’s how “deficit spending” happens. When the government needs $100 for Social Security, Medicare, foreign aid, rent, or anything at all, there’s not enough on deposit to pay it all. So they simply “create” more money and stick the American taxpayers with the obligation to repay it.

Meanwhile, Congress just spent another $500 billion that we do not have and will not have. They justified it by stating “The military is broke, we need to give more money to under privileged people, (even to illegals who are not supposed to be here in the first place) Congressional and federal employee pay raises, food stamps, and other social programs, so we must borrow that amount of money.”

Summary

Is there a way out of all this? Nope. The only way that would/could ever happen is if Congress would stop spending money it does not have — PERIOD! Though thousands of legislators have been elected through the years to do just that, once they get to Washington they cave to the political greed, corruption, and power and simply fall in line. Just like immigrants mean nothing more to Democrats than their votes, these “virgin” legislators are nothing more than a vote to be counted on by the Establishment D.C. swamp creatures. And when it is time to take a vote on spending money — even when everyone knows there is no money in the  bank for the government to spend — all the Establishment House and Senate members pressure all those “virgins” necessary to get enough votes.

I’ll make one of my famous projections here in closing: IF Congress does not immediately develop a process to begin cutting actual government spending and continue with such a process, within 5 years the American economy will crash. Imagine a scenario in which there is no food, no medicine, no transportation, no schools, no utilities at all — all because we have no money, no credit, no ability to make money or pay any person or entity to provide any of these services that we have taken for granted for so long.

It’s happening today! THEY CANNOT EVEN GET TOILET PAPER TODAY IN VENEZUELA! Everything I stated in the sentence above is happening right now in Venezuela, even though their country is rich with oil. There is NO way to get oil out of the ground, processed, and to the marketplace.

5 years is our “grace period.” The rapidly growing giant in the East is gobbling up all that it can to become Earth’s lone Superpower: China. They have already successfully postured their economic structure — both internally and internationally — to be able to quickly un-tether themselves from any goods and services dependency on the U.S. Yes it is true that there is virtually no Middle Class in China and that the Communist Party still controls life there. But those at the top of the heap understand what it is to make the hard decisions necessary to survive. America’s leadership of 535 individuals cannot wait every week to leave their place of work — the Capitol — to take another taxpayer paid vacation.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Congress took vacation while America drowned in debt Congress initiated.

Rand Paul got it right: “As an expected vote approached in the Senate to pass the bill with a $500 Billion pricetag, Rand Paul began to throw up roadblocks, demanding a vote on his amendment that would demonstrate how the two-year budget deal breaks past pledges to rein in federal spending. GOP leaders refused to allow him to offer the amendment, arguing that if Paul got an amendment vote, many other senators might want one, too. Paul, in turn, refused to allow the vote to go forward, making use of Senate rules that allow individual senators to slow down proceedings that require the consent of all.

‘I can’t in all good honesty, in all good faith, just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits,’ Paul said on the Senate floor as evening pushed into night. Paul objected after a visibly irritated McConnell tried to move to a vote. Then Paul launched into a lengthy floor speech deriding bipartisan complicity on deficit spending while the country goes ‘on and on and on, finding new wars to fight that make no sense.'”

This may be the Armageddon Nancy Pelosi warned us to watch out for.

And this one ain’t the Democrats’ fault.