Complimentary Story
Editor, Wisconsin Christian News:September 2024
Eric Hovde ran an interesting campaign ad. Not recently, but when he first tried for the Republican Senate nomination. He eventually lost to Tommy Thompson.
In the ad, as I recall, Hovde was walking on blocks representing our national debt until they became too high to even climb. I hope his team runs a similar ad this time. I also recall reading our former Senator Proxmire’s retirement speech in the 1980s. At the time our nation’s debt was about two trillion dollars. In a nutshell he thought our nation was doomed if we didn’t confront our addiction to debt.
I encourage readers to research that history. The site I consulted only went back to 1929. That year the Stockmarket crashed and Hoover was President. Here are a few “highlights” regarding the debt:
In 1929, it was $17 Billion. Note these numbers are not adjusted for today’s dollar value. When FDR took the helm in 1933, it rose from $20 B to $27 B by year’s end. When he died in 1945, that year would end with a $259 B debt.
You may say, “Yes, but the Great Depression, WWII, etc.” Yet, the trend has not changed. JFK was assassinated in 1963 and at year’s end $306 B in debt. In Reagan’s first year, 1981, it almost reached a Trillion dollars. When he left, $2.6 Trillion.
Wisconsin Senator Proxmire retired about that time. When Clinton bowed out we were $5.7 T in debt. Bush left us with with $10 T. Obama with $19.57 Trillion.
The general trend seems from 2000 to 2019 the debt was rising a little more than one trillion per year. $5.67 T to $22.7. In 2020, Trump’s last year, it leapt to $26.9 Trillion. Now, to mimic a Johnny Cash song, “How high is the debt, Joe Biden? Well it’s thirty five trillion and risin.” Likely over $36 T before the election results are in.
Who is to blame? Well, it seems to be a true bipartisan effort of pass the buck and point the finger. While some, as Proxmire, have sounded the alarm, every President and every congress is to blame. The mainstream media for downplaying or ignoring the issue, were their enablers.
But at the heart of it all have been the electorate with a “benefit” addiction. A morally bankrupt society. Wanting their goodies, but unwilling to pay for them. Free “this,” free “that,” the government will pay for it, but they have not. Thus we just keep accumulating ever greater debt.
Think about it. It took 51 years to go from $17 B to $1 T, but just 28 years to get to $10 T. Now in just 16 years the debt has more than tripled. One of the more shocking parts of the late Senator’s speech was that he, a democrat, hoped his party would not win the next presidency...why?
He thought even then that a crash was imminent. America would finally have to own up, that we had spent ourselves into bankruptcy. Another country music legend in, “I wish a buck was still silver,” asked, “Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?”
That snowball, once manageable, has become a massive iceberg such as the one that sank the Titanic, yet we happily sail along as the band plays on.
Short of Divine intervention I don’t see a resolution. Over the years, politicians in both parties have demonstrated a complete lack of resolve to tackle this problem. I’ll leave you to ponder this with a partial quote from Revelations 18:2, “... ‘Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils and the hold of every foul spirit...’”
-Bill Behringer,
Winneconne, WI
