The United States of IOU?

I've been watching with some amount of interest (no pun intended) the House debates on increasing the National Debt Limit. Like every other issue in my recent memory, every vote has gone along party lines. The Republicans argue that the debt limit needs to be raised to meet government obligations including social security and medicare. The Democrats argue that the government needs to implement a "pay as you go" policy for fiscal responsibility. The timing of the matter is curious, in that it's happening right after and election and right before a new Congress convenes.

Of course, those that watched also had to endure the self indulgent carping about the Boston Red Sox, and whether to mint a Benjamin Franklin coin.

I have heard and read the generalalities of the national debt, but decided to look into it a little further.

The Bureau of the Public Debt reports the debt on 11/17 at $7,443,751,916,595.72.

The 2000 debt was estimated at $5,686,338 million. In 1980 it was under $1B. The debt growth slowed under Clinton (over $1 Trillion growth), but regardless of what the Democrats say, the debt continued to increase significantly under President Clinton, as it did under President George H.W. Bush and President Reagan and has under President George W Bush.

Disturbing is the amazing growth of foreign funding of the debt with Japan leading the way holding over $700B and communist China with almost $200B. OPEC even is listed with almost $50B. It appears that this is a most recent development, largely happening over the last 2 years.

I found a report on the Congressional Budget Office site. According to the CBO report based on this Treasury report

• Defense - $437B
• Social Security - $487B
• Medicare/Medicaid - $476B
• Interest on the public debt - $168B

The deficit for 2004 is somewhere between $300B and $500B shooting for a whopping $1T.

Intrestingly, the interest on the debt adds a significant amount to our annual deficit. But it's been building for 100 years, so it's not going away. So where to cut? I'd guess that each of the large consumers of the budget could eleminate waste. But they also reflect the perceived national public priorities with regard to health care, caring for the elderly and national defense.

Other national priorities include:

• Education ($46B so far in 2004) - The vast majority of our public schools are funded at the state and local level, however, there have been great benefits in programs such as No Child Left Behind ($22B)
• Homeland defense ( $20B so far in 2004) - One wonders how much overlap there is between the Department of Homeland Defense, and the Department of Justice. However, between the two departments the 2005 budget is a little over $50B.

So, what's left?

• Department of Agriculture ($19B)
• Department of Commerce ($5.7B)
• Department of Energy ($24B)
• HUD ($31B) Are you kidding!
• Department of the Interior ($10.8B)
• Department of Labor ($12B)
• Department of State ($10B)
  
• Department of Transportation ($57B)
• Department of Treasury ($11B)
• Department of Vetrans Affairs ($30B)
• Corps of Engineers ($4B)
• Environmental Protection Agency ($8B)
• NASA ($16B)
• National Science Foundation ($6B)
• Small Business Administration ($627M)
• Other Agencies, like the FCC, EEOC, Office of the President, FTC, GSA, etc.... $???B

Is there anything our government isn't governing (or socializing)? And good God, this doesn't even include coverage of state and local government! What the hell are all of these people doing with this money?

Compare revenues of our government with the top Fortune 500 companies.

1. US Government $1798B
   
2. Walmart - $258B
3. Exxon - $213B
4. GM - $195B
5. Ford - $165B
6. GE - $134B
7. Chevron - $112B
8. ConocoPhillips - $99B
9. Citigroup - $94B
10. IBM - $89B
11. American International Group - $81B
12. HP - $73B
13. Verizon - $67B
14. The Home Depot - $65B
15. Berkshire Hathaway - $64B
16. Altria Group - $61B

The US Government has revenues higher than the rest on the list combined! Now, I'm not suggesting that the Government can be run like a Fortune 100 company. It can't. I'm just trying to illustrate how huge our Government has become.

We cannot afford to continue to grow our Government at the rate we have for the last 60 years and expect to preserve our way of life. It's unsustainable. We the people have allowed our elected leaders to do this to us and it's taken 60 years to get to where we're at. Even it we start today, it won't be fixed in 4 years or 8 years or probably 20 years.

We elect our politicians to make the hard decisions on spending our money. And evidently there is alot of it to spend each year ($1.7T). We need to start holding them accountable for making more responsible decisions with regards to funding programs that only serve the national intrest. Our elected officials need to hold these government departments accountable for being efficient and until our deficit and debt is under control, we need to invest in programs that only serve our national intrest.

Natural disasters are going to happen (hurricanes). So are International crisis requiring military action (Afganistan, Iraq). Our budgeting needs to have room to account for these annual discretionary expenditures. Right now, it doesn't have enough.

Otherwise, we may all need to work full time for the government in 20 years. Only problem is, who will fund it? Maybe we'll be working for the Japanese and Chinese to pay the debt we'll owe them.