Chasing the Wind

Kevin Hassett’s article is funny and sad. Sad becuse it’s true; funny because of his observations. Sample of funny:

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

Sample of sad:

It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors.

To get into our current financial mess, we started with the idea that banks should loan money to people who couldn’t afford to pay them back. When banks balked, the US government bought the worthless loans. Now banks are happy, they can loan money to everybody.

This system flourished under George Bush, and collectively we happily spent our children’s future. When the system started to collapse in 2008, we spent more money to try and make it through the election cycle. It didn’t work.

Now our children are broke. Obama’s solution, then, is to also spend our grandchildren’s future. This is also unsustainable. We are spending money we have not earned, and selling IOU’s to China to pay for it. Eventually, China will not want to buy our IOU’s, and the value of the dollar will collapse. The Fed will be forced to raise interest rates to try to entice people to buy our IOUs.

Do we want the US to become a third world country? Is that our goal? At this point, I don’t care what the government wants to spend money on, I’m against it. I don’t want to pay for abortions in Africa or studying the drinking behavior of Chinese prostitutes. And I don’t want to spend so-called “Stimulus Package” money or pay for universal healthcare or credits to by housing or cars or energy efficient appliances. I don’t want the US government to suck money from our wallets via cap-and-trade or “taxing the wealthy.” I would be happy if Washington would just put the pens down and sat on their thumbs for a few years and did absolutely nothing.

Remember this: government does not grant freedom. Liberty is given to us by our Creator. Government can only pass laws which limit freedom.

I want to be free.