Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

A Debt Crisis Is Coming, and We’re All to Blame
The Daily Signal ^ | September 13, 2017 | Walter E. Williams

Posted on 09/13/2017 8:09:10 AM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie

The largest threat to our prosperity is government spending that far exceeds the authority enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Federal spending in 2017 will top $4 trillion. Social Security, at $1 trillion, will take up most of it. Medicare ($582 billion) and Medicaid ($404 billion) are the next-largest expenditures.

Other federal social spending includes food stamps, unemployment compensation, child nutrition, child tax credits, supplemental security income and student loans, all of which total roughly $550 billion. Social spending by Congress consumes about two-thirds of the federal budget.

Where do you think Congress gets the resources for such spending? It’s not the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.

The only way Congress can give one American a dollar is to use threats, intimidation, and coercion to confiscate that dollar from another American. Congress forcibly uses one American to serve the purposes of another American.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: debtcrisis; deficit
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-60 next last

1 posted on 09/13/2017 8:09:11 AM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie

Dr. Williams nails it.

We are ALL to blame. As NONE of us are apparently willing to part with our particular favorite Gubbermint program.

I learned this selling to farmers, who pretend to be the most rock-ribbed patriotic Conservatives in the land, UNTIL you threaten their favorite subsidy program.


2 posted on 09/13/2017 8:14:50 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie

Leftist deflection from the REAL problem: a bloated mostly unconstitutional government.

Whatever “crisis of debt” we may have doesn’t hold a candle to the real problem. We have a crisis of a $4 trillion federal government that is 80% unconstitutional.

Dismantle the $3+ trillion unconstitutional portion of the feds and the “debt crisis” will disappear very quickly. More importantly, we will be a Free Constitutional Republic once again, free and prosperous.


3 posted on 09/13/2017 8:18:10 AM PDT by Jim W N
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie

nope just liberals and their RINO enablers


4 posted on 09/13/2017 8:18:30 AM PDT by TexasFreeper2009 (Make America Great Again !)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie

“The only way Congress can give one American a dollar is to use threats, intimidation, and coercion to confiscate that dollar from another American. Congress forcibly uses one American to serve the purposes of another American.”
Bears Repeating.
God Bless Dr Williams.


5 posted on 09/13/2017 8:25:17 AM PDT by griswold3
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie
No problem, Trump not only promised to balance the budget but to eliminate the entire National debt.

Yep, eliminate, and when he said it more than a few here posted that they believed him...and now that Mexico has built that Wall and he deported them all... errr I mean he made building the Wall be the condition for an amnesty bill....errr....maybe we are screwed after all..

Trump insists he would be able to wipe out the United States’s debt in eight years.
The Republican presidential front-runner said in a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post that he’d be able to get rid of the more than $19 trillion debt “over a period of eight years.

Trump: I will eliminate U.S. debt in 8 years (The Hill - 04/02/16)

6 posted on 09/13/2017 8:26:12 AM PDT by sickoflibs (Message to Trump : I am not tired of winning yet. Please more winning ! Get your crap together fast!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie
The only way Congress can give one American a dollar is to use threats, intimidation, and coercion to confiscate that dollar from another American.

he only way Congress can give one American a dollar is to use threats, intimidation, and coercion to confiscate 66 cents from another American, then borrow 34 cents from future taxpayers without their knowledge or consent.

7 posted on 09/13/2017 8:29:02 AM PDT by webheart (Grammar police on the scene.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Buckeye McFrog
I learned this selling to farmers, who pretend to be the most rock-ribbed patriotic Conservatives in the land, UNTIL you threaten their favorite subsidy program.
Food stamps (or whatever they're called now) is a farm subsidy.

I'd much rather subsidize a farmer to keep him in business through bad times than the likes of Elon Musk (Tesla).

I don't recall seeing any of this kind of talk from Walter Williams during the 8 yrs of Obama...I must have missed it.

8 posted on 09/13/2017 8:29:49 AM PDT by lewislynn ( Transgender: A person who thinks s/he's wrong side out.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie

> The only way Congress can give one American a dollar is to use threats, intimidation, and coercion to confiscate that dollar from another American. <

There is actually another method. Congress can simply print more dollars. We will eventually (years from now) see that on a major scale. It is the only way out of the deficit.

And then inflation will take off like nobody’s business.


9 posted on 09/13/2017 8:29:53 AM PDT by Leaning Right (I have already previewed or do not wish to preview this composition.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie

> The only way Congress can give one American a dollar is to use threats, intimidation, and coercion to confiscate that dollar from another American. <

There is actually another method. Congress can simply print more dollars. We will eventually (years from now) see that on a major scale. It is the only way out of the deficit.

And then inflation will take off like nobody’s business.


10 posted on 09/13/2017 8:29:57 AM PDT by Leaning Right (I have already previewed or do not wish to preview this composition.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs

Most of what Trump wants to do and says he can do requires a cooperative Congress, so I think you might cut him a little slack. It’s pretty obvious that Congress, the media, Democrats, establishment Republicans, government workers and at least one third of Americans are not willing to give him a chance. Yourself included.


11 posted on 09/13/2017 8:33:23 AM PDT by webheart (Grammar police on the scene.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Jim 0216
Dismantle the $3+ trillion unconstitutional portion of the feds

That would include the various handout and subsidy programs that the author is talking about. Did you read the first sentence of the article?

"The largest threat to our prosperity is government spending that far exceeds the authority enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution."

I hope you're not calling the author a leftist. He's making the same point as you.

12 posted on 09/13/2017 8:34:03 AM PDT by NorthMountain
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: lewislynn

The REAL support for the Food Stamp Program comes from
Walmart/Kroger/Safeway/Publix/Kraft/Campbells/Hormel/ConAgra/Kelloggs/Nestle. Not so much poor people.


13 posted on 09/13/2017 8:40:51 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: lewislynn
I don't recall seeing any of this kind of talk from Walter Williams during the 8 yrs of Obama...I must have missed it.

You missed it. This is from June 2016; just over a year ago. Bath-house Barry Benghazi was infesting the White House at the time. If you were busy shrieking "NEVERTRUMPER!!!", you probably missed a lot of things.

Money Going to Washington

14 posted on 09/13/2017 8:41:51 AM PDT by NorthMountain
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Leaning Right
There is actually another method. Congress can simply print more dollars. We will eventually (years from now) see that on a major scale. It is the only way out of the deficit. And then inflation will take off like nobody’s business.

Probably not, as in a globalized economy every other country on earth has too much to lose if our boat goes down. Look for them to keep the game of Three Card Monte going for as long into the future as is humanly possible.


15 posted on 09/13/2017 8:46:40 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Buckeye McFrog
First off he's wrong that the only place FedGov can get money is by extorting it from taxpayers. We also have the ability to create it out of thin air (the Fed). And we use that a lot, too. Generally between 1/3 and 1/2 of the money spent by Fed Gov is deficit. The deficit is funded by T-bills, The T-bills are bought by the Fed (for the most part, at this point).

SO, in the context of what is really happening Walter Williams appeal to common sense and Constitutional Authority falls flat. It's not that I disagree with it, but it's just that it's completely irrelevant.

There is no way to get from here (post New Deal America) to there (Constitutional limited government America of the founders) without the worlds biggest reset. That would be some sort of catastrophe by definition: maybe started by something else, like a war or large scale cyber-terrorist attack, or maybe brought on by the markets themselves.

Regardless of who starts it it will be horrific and result in massive loss of life.

It's odd that so many on the Patriot / Constitutional Right seem to *want* this catastrophe to occur, sort of a moral reckoning for a system they don't like.

It's also strangely debilitating to think this way: I see this on patriot board. "First SHTF happens, *then* ..." In other words a lot of smart people are waiting for the inevitable before a) feeling smugly self-satisfied that what can not endure has finally failed and b) now being able to prove that their idea of (pick one: gold based currency, pure barter systems, a new American Constitution, an independent Texas, a white ethnostate, etc.) will now be realized.

So, they wait for the crash, the fetishize over the crash, they prep for the crash. What if the crash never comes? (Say, not in your finite human live).

The fall of the Roman Republic and it's replacement by the Roman Empire happened in 45 BC when Julius Caeser took power. That system lasted till 475 AD in the West and 1453 in the East.

"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation." - Adam Smith

There is a constant stream of books just like this:

Just because it didn't happen, doesn't mean it *never* will, but it might mean it's not going to happen in a time frame that is meaningful to us. If one had invested everything in canned food in prep for the 1990 crash at age 30 you'd be 57 now -- and have a lot of spoiled canned food.

Those who aren't coming at it from "told you so" economics of the right (Batra) or left (Hartman) maybe coming at it from the religious point of view.

I grew up in a small town and someone there sent a copy of this book to every resident around the time of its publication, in 1970. I read it. It claimed that the fulfillment of end-time prophecy was destined to occur soon, probably by the 1980s.

To state the obvious: that didn't happen either. If you were 30 years old when this book was pubblished you'd by 77, you've waited your entire adult life by no Second Coming, no Left Behind moment.

In the 1840s there was the "Millerite" movement of evangelical Christians who came to believe that, based on the writings and calculations of William Miller that Jesus Christ would return to Earth between the spring of 1843 and the spring of 1844. This dates was eventually updated to Oct. 22, 1844. Wikipedia notes that: "When this did not happen (an event known as the "Great Disappointment"), most of his followers disbanded and returned to their original churches."

I think most of the people ranting about the debt, the lack of Constitutional Government, the folly of deficit spending, and so forth - will be experiencing their own "great disappointment* sooner or later because: "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation*.

16 posted on 09/13/2017 8:48:00 AM PDT by Jack Black
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie

Dr. Williams identifies a major if not the major cause of our rogue government, but he misses the bigger result - not a “debt crisis” but a freedom crisis”. The Left, the cause of our rogue government and its disastrous results, loves to scream about the big debt as insurmountable.

But huge government debt is solvable as it has been in the past. The “insurmountable” mentality comes from those who cling to the idea of the eternal life of unconstitutional and wasteful government bureaucracies.

Yes, federal entitlements are all almost without exception unconstitutional. The Constitution, the creator of the federal government, does not delegate such entitlement power to the feds. This entitlement monster was created by the likes of deceitful Leftist politicians like FDR who by the steady steam of Lying Leftist demagoguery and a citizenship not willing to stand up against such lying power grabs have hijacked our Free Constitutional Republic.

Nevertheless, the answer to the debt and the bigger issue, our freedom, is solved by dismantling these noxious bureaucracies and the rest of the $3+ trillion unconstitutional portion of the federal government with its noxious and lying “entitlements”. Easily said, almost impossible to do, right? Well, America’s birth was also “impossible”. How could a bunch of rag-tag colonists defeat the greatest military power in the world? But by the Divine Providence of Almighty God, it happened and America was birthed.

Likewise, by the grace of God, we will once again recover our Free Constitutional Republic. Recovery and maintenance of freedom requires faith. We need, and I think we will get, a new spiritual awakening that will turn hearts to God once again and away from depending on man and his miserable government. We will once again be an INDEPENDENCE and free people.

It’s not primarily a “debt” crisis, it is primarily a constitutional crisis.


17 posted on 09/13/2017 8:48:44 AM PDT by Jim W N
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Buckeye McFrog

“As NONE of us are apparently willing to part with our particular favorite Gubbermint program.”

BS. I’d be happy to do without it all. Every last bit of it.


18 posted on 09/13/2017 8:49:50 AM PDT by CodeToad (Victorious warriors WIN first, then go to war! Go TRUMP!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Governor Dinwiddie

Creating massive debt that will be passed onto future generations. All for the purpose of buying votes.


19 posted on 09/13/2017 8:52:12 AM PDT by Starboard
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NorthMountain

The author is identifying the same problem as I, but he focuses on the wrong result, debt, as the most important issue which is what the Left does. But, no, I don’t think the author is Leftist

Here’s my shtick on this.

Dr. Williams identifies a major if not the major cause of our rogue government, but he misses the bigger result - not a “debt crisis” but a freedom crisis”. The Left, the cause of our rogue government and its disastrous results, loves to scream about the big debt as insurmountable.

But huge government debt is solvable as it has been in the past. The “insurmountable” mentality comes from those who cling to the idea of the eternal life of unconstitutional and wasteful government bureaucracies.

Yes, federal entitlements are all almost without exception unconstitutional. The Constitution, the creator of the federal government, does not delegate such entitlement power to the feds. This entitlement monster was created by the likes of deceitful Leftist politicians like FDR who by the steady steam of Lying Leftist demagoguery and a citizenship not willing to stand up against such lying power grabs have hijacked our Free Constitutional Republic.

Nevertheless, the answer to the debt and the bigger issue, our freedom, is solved by dismantling these noxious bureaucracies and the rest of the $3+ trillion unconstitutional portion of the federal government with its noxious and lying “entitlements”. Easily said, almost impossible to do, right? Well, America’s birth was also “impossible”. How could a bunch of rag-tag colonists defeat the greatest military power in the world? But by the Divine Providence of Almighty God, it happened and America was birthed.

Likewise, by the grace of God, we will once again recover our Free Constitutional Republic. Recovery and maintenance of freedom requires faith. We need, and I think we will get, a new spiritual awakening that will turn hearts to God once again and away from depending on man and his miserable government. We will once again be an INDEPENDENCE and free people.

It’s not primarily a “debt” crisis, it is primarily a constitutional crisis.


20 posted on 09/13/2017 8:53:27 AM PDT by Jim W N
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-60 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson