Well fellow American, your $1,400 stimulus check is in the mail, and all it’s going to cost you and every other man, woman and child in the country is an extra $6,000 of your share or so in national debt. So in other words, this may be the most efficient spending of money by the federal government ever.
Congress keeps borrowing money hoping our debtors — China mostly — don’t decide to pay them a late night visit asking, “Please give us the money, before we have to start breaking kneecaps.”
If that day ever comes, I say just give them Ohio.
The national debt is a serious issue politicians agree has to be dealt with, but only after spending $165 billion on pork barrels — no, not the old term for wasteful government spending, but actual barrels full of pork.
As with everything, it’s a partisan issue. Some guy will start the conversation by saying something radical like, “Perhaps we should spend less money.”
This person will immediately be investigated for ethics violations at a cost of $4 million. When it’s discovered this person has ethics, he or she will be thrown out of Congress for being entirely unqualified for office.
A lot of times it’s a Republican who spouts off with some drastic idea, like maybe America doesn’t need to spend $29 million for a regional cheese museum in North Dakota.
This is countered with the rational argument of, “You guys spent more money under Trump than we spent under Obama.”
“Well, you spent more money under Obama than we did under Bush.”
“Did not!”
“Did to!”
Welcome to the national discourse.
Congress will host hearings to get testimony from economics experts including former federal reserve chair Alan Greenspan, Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. The result will be a bipartisan bill to spend $4.2 billion to study the deficit issue and also to provide an endowment for feline portrait artists.
Democrats say they’ll just raise taxes on the rich to pay off the nation’s debt. The proposals range from a modest 2 percent wealth tax on those making more than $1 million a year to “Ah, just take all of it from everyone.”
Meanwhile, the Republican solution is to lower taxes this year whilst spending $35 zillion, so that “next year we can get serious about the debt.”
The Democrats will counter with an $86 bazillion spending bill so they can finally make good on their campaign promise of free healthcare for underprivileged dogs.
Getting money for providing nothing of value is an American tradition. How else do you explain the popularity of gambling, Facebook and cable news anchors?
However, it’s hard for me to accept it. If I find $5 or more in a parking lot, I have to turn it in. My conscience gets to me, which also disqualifies me for a congressional run.
What if that $5 was some poor woman’s milk money for the week? What if it’s an unemployed dad’s last gas money so he could drive to a job interview? What if it belonged to a little kid who saved it for six weeks so he could buy a comic book?
Oh, that’s silly. No one under age 26 has read anything not on a phone screen since 2009.
I wouldn’t be concerned if we were running with a $100 billion surplus, I’d be all about it. Heck yeah. Give me some of my money back.
But we’re not. We’re nearly $30 trillion in the hole.
If you take every bit of wealth away from the 100 richest Americans so that they had nothing but barrels to wear, and applied all of it to the national debt, we’d still be about $30 trillion in debt.
Hopefully those barrels aren’t already full of pork.
The Richfield Reaper – March 20, 2021
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