Dead broke--but still spending.

• Author: Jedick, Peter
• Position: ECONOMIC OBSERVER

THE U.S. IS BANKRUPT and not enough of our politicians are doing anything about it. Back in October 2015, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that, on Nov. 3, the Federal government would "exhaust its authority to borrow money to pay for its operations." In other words, the government would not have the money to pay our bills unless Congress once again raised the debt ceiling, which was about 18 trillion dollars. So, then-House Speaker John Boehner and Pres. Barack Obama drafted a new budget deal that included suspending the nation's debt limit until 2017. Economists estimate that, by that time the national red ink should be around 20 trillion dollars, which gives Pres. Obama the dubious distinction of doubling the nation's debt during his presidency; talk about kicking the can down the road.

During the presidential debates, the huge debt barely has been mentioned. That is too bad, because paying interest on the debt is eating up more than half of the economy. We are in danger of becoming another Greece or, even worse, Puerto Rico--and maybe even Detroit.

How did we get ourselves in such a predicament? The idea to use "deficit spending" to jump-start the national economy goes back to the Kennedy Administration. In 1962, his economic advisor, Walter Heller, wanted both a tax cut and new government programs to create jobs, kind of like Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression--sans the tax cut. So, he proposed borrowing $10,000,000,000 to keep the government working during the transition. The idea was that, once the economy heated up and people went back to work, tax revenues would increase and we could pay off the debt. Sounds good on paper, right?

The problem is that the politicians in Washington never concern themselves with paying off our debts. Once they collect our money they like to spend it and move on. So, they just pass the debts on to the next Congress and Administration. We should have addressed this problem the first time the debt limit hit one trillion dollars. The world needs a strong, economically healthy U.S. as a beacon for democracy. Yet, we find ourselves borrowing around $5,000,000,000 every day just to keep the government functioning. Many politicians and pundits blame the debt on our nation's many ground wars, but I contend that Pres. Lyndon B Johnson's "War on Poverty" is the real culprit. His goal was admirable. He wanted to make "taxpayers" out of "tax-eaters," but he failed miserably.

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