What label do you assign yourself politically? Liberal? Conservative? Something else? Some of us consider ourselves to be “deficit hawks.” And for us, these are dark days.

For deficit hawks, reducing the federal budget deficit is a top priority, even amidst all the other priorities that clamor for attention. Some of us believe that if something is worth having, then it’s worth paying for ourselves rather than sticking our grandchildren with the credit card bill.

There obviously aren’t many of us in the nation’s capital. The national debt, which was $5.7 trillion on Sept. 30, 2000, surpassed $21 trillion on March 14. It has almost quadrupled in less than 18 years.

That $21 trillion divided by 327 million Americans equals $64,348 per each of us – as of 6 p.m. Monday afternoon. By the time you read this, all of those numbers will be bigger. Continue reading Dark days for deficit hawks →

Have you ever brought your children to the store and had to fend off one request after another to buy something? One effective way to make them stop, and teach them a lesson, is to tell them they can have what they want – as long as they pay for it themselves.

You can see the wheels turn behind their eyes as they’re confronted with the goodies’ cost versus their limited resources. What seemed so important when someone else was paying for it no longer is worth emptying their own piggy bank.

Apparently, many in Washington have never taken their children shopping. Or maybe their parents never took them. Continue reading Emptying tomorrow’s piggy banks →

Let’s say you served on a company’s board of directors, and its by-laws required the president to give a periodic report. And let’s say your company was losing money – in fact, a lot of it, and had been for a long time. It’s deeply in debt with no real plan to get out. Worst of all, the company’s structure and culture virtually assure the debt will continue growing until someday its consequences are severe.

The report would have to cover a lot of things. But shouldn’t at least part of it include an honest appraisal of the company’s rising red ink along with a specific plan of action?

That’s what was wrong with President Trump’s State of the Union address, and most of the ones given by previous presidents. The speech stretched for nearly an hour and 21 minutes from the first word to last. It was not a bad speech. But, in all that time, Trump didn’t even mention the national debt. For the record, it’s now almost $20.5 trillion, or more than $62,600 for every American man, woman and child. Continue reading State of denial →