History Tells Us Why The Deficit Reduction Effort Is Doomed To Fail

Deficit hawks including Thomas Edison, Calvin Coolidge, Strom Thurmond and Bob Dole have all failed to stop the national debt from growing. George Washington thought $83 million was bad. Today we're close to $14 trillion.

Gus Lubin | Dec. 1, 2010 | Business Insider

EXCERPTS:

"I sincerely believe… that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

"Viewing government borrowing so lightly, he believes, encourages the government to spend freely and to promote more and more governmental activities. In his view the result will be more and more restricted, and that ultimately the totalitarian state may emerge." [Yale economist Fred Rogers Fairchild]

"Unless we as a people begin to practice ''self-denial and collective discipline" we will be forced to endure "cuts in progressive public spending, a decline in our international influence, and a growing cynicism about our collective historical destiny." [billionaire Pete Peterson]

"The president's budget which passed the House and Senate this week we'll make the crisis much much worse. Rather than getting spending under control it — spending out of control. Rather than keeping taxes low to create jobs it chases ever higher spending with ever higher taxes and results in ever higher debt. An unprecedented. Unsustainable. Increase in — It doubles our national debt in five years in triples our debt in ten years. Put simply. The Democrats' budget spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much from our kids and their kids." [Rep. Paul Ryan]

"The current federal debt explosion is being driven by an inability to stem new spending initiatives. Having appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars on new programs in the last year and a half, it is very difficult for Congress to deny an additional one or two billion dollars for programs that significant constituencies perceive as urgent. The federal government is currently saddled with commitments for the next three decades that it will be unable to meet in real terms." [Alan Greenspan in WSJ]

FULL ARTICLE

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