Cal Thomas - Our spending problem

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, March 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Commentator Cal Thomas says the US government doesn’t have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: In his State of the Union address, President Biden claimed he would be “the only president to ever cut the deficit by more than $1 trillion dollars in a single year.” While this is technically true, he ignores the fact that the reduction in the deficit will be due to the decreased expenditures associated with COVID-19 relief.

Meanwhile, the debt continues to rise because members of both parties refuse to control spending. The House last week passed a $1.5 trillion dollar spending bill that is more than 2,000 pages long. Experience teaches most members have not read all, or even most of it. Why should they? They aren't spending their money.

Remember earmarks, those little and big add-ons to spending bills that Republicans once banned. They promised voters they would never return. But, they're back, thanks to some Republicans inserting them into the spending bill. Earmarks reportedly take up 367 pages of it!

Social programs, which are never measured by their success or failure, are also part of this spending monstrosity. To get more for defense, as a Wall Street Journal editorial noted, “Republicans had to concede to more domestic spending on top of the $3.4 trillion dollars spent in the last year.”

This irresponsible spending continues because of a philosophical shift among American citizens. People once expected to be responsible for themselves and turn to government as a last resort. Now, too many Americans think they are "entitled" to "benefits" and that "the rich" aren't paying their "fair share" in taxes.

In fact, the federal government has once again collected a record $1.86 trillion dollars in total taxes through the first five months of fiscal 2022. Revenue is not the problem. Spending that has given us a $30 trillion dollar (and counting) debt is the problem.

We can't say we haven't been warned about what uncontrolled debt can do to nations. Experts have long sounded alarms about government debt.

As Peter Wehner and Ian Tufts write in the winter edition of National Affairs, “These experts warned that large annual deficits and debt could lead to troubling, even catastrophic, consequences: prolonged recessions, rising interest rates, increasing inflation, reduced upward mobility, a weakened dollar, a plunging stock market, a mass sell-off of foreign-government holdings of U.S. Treasuries, a collapse of the financial system, and general economic and social calamity. These would all grow more likely, they cautioned, if the federal government failed to get its fiscal house in order."

Like so much of the Constitution, the left and too many on the right, have ignored history and sage advice when it comes to the economy. We are doomed to repeat that history unless we get our economic house in order. That will require more Americans taking a pledge to care for themselves and rely less on government. And it will mean electing people who will heed warnings and advice.

But given human nature, I’m not optimistic. Too many people would rather get a check than earn one.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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