The Conservative View: The Future Costs

Better late than never... this week's Conservative View, by Adair County Commissioner Russell Turner.

The Conservative View
by Russell Turner

The Future Costs

A couple of nights ago I watched The History Channel documentary about World War 2. Most of the people today do not appreciate the sacrifice that our parents and grandparents made to protect this nation and our way of life. Our way of life was paid for with the blood of that generation. With hard work and good fiscal policies the United States became the dominate power on the earth militarily and economically. It is sad that today many Americans do not understand the meaning of sacrifice and the duty that we adults of today have for future generations. We Americans had better start to wake up and see that our stature as a nation is shifting away from us because of our poor, or lack of, spending discipline.

We're in hock as a nation like never before. Neither the current administration nor Congress has any viable plan to change that fact. And both the actual and hidden costs of our debt are rising every day. Our public debt can boggle the mind, currently it is over 12 trillion dollars. In 2009 alone we have added an additional 1.4 trillion debt. Even with the cheap interest rates we have now, the interest on the debt is 202 billion dollars. If that 202 billion was divided up to the entire population of the United States, every man, woman and child would receive a check of $656.00. While there are some people who are obsessed with the health care legislation, they need to realize that if we don’t get a handle on our spending problem all of the taxes we pay will go just to pay the interest on the debt. In a very short period of time we can forget about defense, health care, Social Security or anything else. We will experience the biggest shift of the balance of power that the world has ever seen.

Today we have an unhealthy reliance upon the nation of China; already they are the largest owner of U.S. debt. If the Chinese ceased to buy any more of our debt it would send our economy into a tailspin. We won the cold war with the former Soviet Union, but I have found that the bigger enemy can be the country that controls the purse strings. If we don’t learn some spending discipline the legacy that we leave future generations will be a nation that has lost its world influence not because of losses on the battlefield but because of poor finances.

If you wish to contact Russell Turner, or want to subscribe to his email loop, email him at rdrepublican@windstream.net.