The U.S. Budget/Debt Crisis: Why Are They Making It So Complicated?

With a myriad of opinions and proposals being made by various government officials, including the President, one would be led to believe that the current problem is incredibly complex.  In fact, it is really very simple and there is an easy solution if our elected officials would only focus on the forest rather than the trees.

The problem is that the United States has been on an out-of-control spending splurge that has created such a massive debt that the world, including the credit markets, are very worried and believe we may be headed for an economic meltdown.  In order to rein in this worry, we need to establish a long-range plan to pay down this massive debt to a more sustainable level.  Forget all the hocus pocus and creative cheating being dreamed up in Washington.  Simply treat this as a mortgage on the U.S. and establish a reasonable amortization schedule to pay it off.  The debt can be amortized over whatever period of time needed to make it manageable, 100 years or whatever.  The important thing is to reverse the “Debt Clock” and to guarantee the world that making regular payments on the mortgage will be our number one priority.  If we do this one thing that truly addresses the core problem and gets at the bottom line of what is needed, all the other details, balanced budget, controlled spending, entitlement reform, tax reform, etc., etc. will necessarily follow.

Our government simply needs to assure the world that we are serious about  paying down our $14 + trillion debt and have a guaranteed, top priority, program, a “mortgage on the U.S”., to deal with the problem.

Update – July 29, 2011

Does Barack Obama actually want the U.S to experience a financial crtisis?

Many now believe that this is his true goal and having achieved that goal he would not “waste a good crisis” as advised by Rahm Emaneul.  Such a crisis would likely lead to widespread civil unrest and provide the opportunity for him to invoke emergency measures and seize more power.

I would rather believe that our current problems are simply due to a dysfunctional congress and an incompetent President who has shown little capacity for leadership.  However, it’s hard to understand why Obama, being on the verge of an agreement with John Boehner last week, blew the deal up at the last minute by changing his terms.

Making sense of this Washington fiasco stretches one’s capacity for rational analysis to the limit.