Letter from your Children & Grandchildren...

If we do not address the national debt, 30 years from now you may receive this letter from your children or grandchildren:

2-11-2039

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am writing to ask you how could you sit by and do nothing as the politicians of your day financially destroyed our generation through recklessly increasing the national debt. Your deficit spending was little more than a criminal transference of wealth from future generation to finance the entitlements of your generation. Why? Because, eventually every dollar the federal government borrowed had to be paid back with crippling interest.

If you picked up today's (2-11-2039) paper you would have seen that the interest on the debt is consuming 25% of our tax revenue and the remaining 75% goes towards paying your generation's social security, medicare and medicaid benefits. Of course neither I nor my descendants will enjoy these benefits.

So, how do we fund basic government functions? Through even more deficit spending, coupled with massive taxation and the endless printing of money, which has debased the dollar and lowered the living standards for virtually every American. But, even with that, we've had to cut back on education, defense and basic infrastructure like the repair of roads and bridges...if you thought Chicago had bad roads in 2008, you should see what our streets look like today!

And don't get me started on the great humiliation we face ever time we have to beg the Chinese, Koreans and Indians for an extension on the loans that you began and we have continued out of dire necessity. In order to keep them financing our deficit, through the purchase of government bonds, we've had to raise interest rates to nearly 20%. High interest rates are fine for attracting foreign investors, but they've made cars, homes and higher education, luxuries beyond the means of most ordinary citizens.

Don't tell me you didn't see see this coming. By October 31, 2008, the national debt had already surpassed 10.5 trillion dollars, over $35,000 per person! And interest payments alone were consuming 9% ($237 billion dollars) of your budget! But what did your "great man of change" do? Did he reverse the disastrous financial course that George W. Bush set in motion? No, less than a month into office, Obama presided over a so called "stimulus bill" that increased the national debt by 825 billion dollars...with compound interest that "stimulus bill" has cost my generation trillions of dollars!

And why, oh why did you not do anything about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?!? You saw the disaster coming from miles away. In 2008, these programs were already consuming nearly 45% of your budget and you knew that by 2015 benefits were going to far exceed revenues. But, what did you do? You raided the "social security lock-box" to finance other government programs. And you refused to elect any politician who was serious about entitlement reform. Your "progressives" dared not touch their sacred entitlements, while most of your so-called "conservatives did not have the cajones to build a bridge over these bottomless financial pits. And so few liberals and conservatives said or did anything as the American Empire spent itself into oblivion in Iraq, Afghanistan and hundreds of military bases across the globe.

What an irony - the great generation of change left us with little more than a handful of change.

Sincerely,

Your children and grandchildren.

For more information on the national debt, you should read up on the concord coalition, a
very reputable bi-partisan group supported by the (liberal) Brookings Institute, as well as the (conservative) Heritage Foundation and the Comptroller General, David Walker:

http://www.concordcoalition.org/

http://www.facingup.org/why

http://www.usbudgetwatch.org/

http://www.publicagenda.org/wheredoesthemoneygo