[QUOTE=wdmso;1105616]
Quote:
Originally Posted by scottw
how can you have a "stable" government that is 20 Trillion dollars in debt and growing??
On Jan. 8, 1835, all the big political names in Washington gathered to celebrate what President Andrew Jackson had just accomplished. A senator rose to make the big announcement: "Gentlemen ... the national debt ... is PAID."
That was the one time in U.S. history when the country was debt free. It lasted exactly one year.
It may have only lasted one year, but it was constantly lowered till then. And even though it grew slightly, it briefly was lowered again, then went up, then the Civil War and the nearly eternal growth of debt.
its been said time and time again our military has been conducting war time operations Since Sept 11th and not paid for all put on the National debt .. Its what Americans wants .. ( but have no idea on what it is costing the country nor do the care ) yet the Right loves to uses the debt as another tool of fear for votes and try to convince the public the debt has increased because of immigrants getting benefits and welfare ..
not because of the cost of war keeping them safe .. again fact dont matter
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The cost of war is a Constitutional responsibility of the Federal Government. The massive social programs and entitlements of today, as well as education, are not Constitutional responsibilities of the Federal Government. More is budgeted for extra-Constitutional funding than is budgeted for the military.
That's not an excuse for bad wars. But there is no justification for the Central government to steal the peoples rights and responsibilities and impose its own versions of how their money should be spent
The national debt was enormous at the time of the founding because of money required to finance the Revolutionary War. We owed huge sums to France and other countries as well as to private banks and wealthy citizens. Robert Morris, a private capitalist was tasked with finding ways to borrow or print money in order to carry out the War, and he struggled and scraped well enough to barely pay for the constantly cash strapped efforts, against all odds.
Then there was the infrastructure and other public needs of a new nation. So it took a long time to bring the debt down. But the trajectory of debt was fairly consistently lower and lower. The Federal Government had not yet grown into the massive regulatory State burdened with "programs" necessary to "run" the country as it does today. The country ran itself. The Federal Government limited itself to the duties ascribed to it in the Constitution. So it was able to pay the debt and not get into serious debt.
Then came the Civil War. And with it, not only new massive debt, but newly acquired federal power over the States, and the beginning of "Progressive" ideas borrowed from Germany and France. Progressive ideas that required extra-Constitutional power to realize. The Courts resisted when they were given cases and stanched the growing desire among American elites who admired the efficiency of European administration.
Naturally, new shiny things must be had. The Progressive academics wrote and preached a new form of government which was to make the Constitution obsolete. Or, at least, transformed. To Progressives, the notion that a country could run itself, that a free people could create new wonderful things on their own in any efficient and orderly way, and especially in a more egalitarian way, was an antiquated notion bereft of any historical logic. And, certainly, the Progressives would have thought, that paying for the growth of the Nation would be too expensive for private citizens. Only the super rich could even begin to handle that, and that would inequitably funnel wealth into the hands of the few. Like most everything else, it would require government and its expertise.
It didn't take too much longer (as the debt continuously began to rise while responsibility was gradually transferred to government) before there was a "need" for government to dominate the "running" of America.
Along with increasing debt.
Big moves toward an Administrative Central power began to catch on with Teddy Roosevelt, then Wilson, then and especially FDR, then LBJ, Carter, Bush, and Obama. The government grew bigger and bigger, and the debt grew with it.
Curiously, there was another time when the debt was lowered. A quiet frugal man from Vermont, when Vermont was still Republican, an actual "conservative" who stuck by the Constitution, and refused to pay for things that the States should pay for, became President. That was Calvin Coolidge. After that, Mr. Hoover, a very Progressive Republican, came on the scene, and he was followed by FDR who railed against Hoover's policies then not only followed them, but expanded them exponentially, and created new ones, and got the Supreme Court to finally start seeing the light that the Constitution was a living, breathing thing. And the Debt has continuously gone up since then. And there doesn't seem to be an end in sight to the growth. Unless we reign in the growth and power of the Federal Government and letting the States re-assume what was once their responsibility. And the central government can be relegated once again to its Constitutional duties, which includes wars.