On the recordFebruary 14, 2011
The President today released his budget, and it is a pretty ugly thing. We reach another record deficit next year in his projection and we have deficits that go on as far as the eye can see. We are rapidly heading towards the time when our national debt will equal the economy; 100 percent of GDP. The last time that occurred was in 1944 and 1945, when we were fighting World War II. There is a big difference between now and then. Then, we were fighting a war. At some point, that war would end and the spending would drop. In fact, it did. After 1945, we didn't reach that level of spending again for 30 years. However, this time, the spending is projected to increase every year as far as the eye can see. Then, we financed this debt by Americans through war bonds. Americans financed their own debt. Today, 47 percent of our debt is held by foreigners. We are giving them a power and a control over us. But almost more importantly, back then we were fighting a world war to preserve freedom and our way of life, and that's what drove the deficit and the debt. Today, our deficit and our debt are driven largely as we create bureaucracies, free health care and free retirement plans that the person receiving them doesn't have to pay for, and, in fact, no one in this generation is going to have to pay for. This debt is from the wrong place, it is for the wrong reasons, and it will be with us until as far as we can see.
