Founders rolling in their graves...

I bought a book last year titled Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It. Pete Peterson, a life-long Republican and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, as well as the chairman of the Blackstone group and a founding president of the Concord Coalition wrote this book. It is fascinating, eye-opening, and disgusting all at the same time. I say disgusting because I had no idea some of the stuff our “leaders” have been doing in government for all these years. The thing I really love about this book is that Mr. Peterson is not partisan; he looks at the issues from an economist’s perspective, not a partisan party-member, so he goes after everyone in government equally.

One thing I read recently that Citizen brought up in a recent post was that the “founders are rolling in their graves.” Peterson says this in his book: “America’s founding statesmen had one great aspiration and that was to establish a new nation dedicated to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Shadowing their efforts was one great fear, which was that the new American republic would go the way of so many empires past-to excess, to dissipation, and ultimately, to ruin. They were well read in classical history. Most, like John Adams, were pessimistic ruminations over the “inevitable decay” of civic virtue. Of all the great dangers they worried might pull America down before its time, two stand out as remarkably contemporary: burdensome public debt and quarreling political parties. Many felt so strongly about these dangers that they believed public debts and political parties ought to be banished altogether. Not only that, many believed these two dangers were somehow connected. They associated honest and prudent public accounting with economy. Chronic deficits spelled corrupt leadership, political decadence, and economic ruin.”

Chew on this: “If you look back at the federal budget from George Washington through Dwight Eisenhower and exclude only years of declared war or catastrophic depression, the record is remarkable: 127 years of budget surpluses and 44 years of budget deficits. Even these deficits, on average, were less than 0.5 percent of GDP. Since 1960, the scorecard changes dramatically: just 5 years of surplus and 39 years of deficits, with these post-1960 deficits averaging over 2.5 percent of GDP-a substantial slice of our net national savings. And these figures do not include the much larger liabilities racked up in recent decades, off the books, through unfunded benefit promises.”

How are we ever going to turn this around? I don’t think we can with all the people in Washington right now, with maybe a few exceptions. If only the general public were aware of the virtue and prosperity associated with smaller government. It is great that we are big and rich enough to help out those less-fortunate, but it is costing way too much. Politicians are addicted to their programs, and are unwilling to do what is right. I guess it is hard to do what is right when corporations are stuffing your pockets and flying you around on private jets to play golf; how can you say no to favors then? WAKE UP AMERICA!


Read this book guys, you can borrow it from me if you like.