With all of the talk about the impending “fiscal cliff”, it’s a good time to step back from the trees and take a good look at the forest and how we got here to begin with.

For the last sixty years or so, Congress has been on an ever growing spending binge, guided by a political philosophy that government should play an ever growing role in our everyday lives – a role which requires more of our substance.  In fact, it increasingly requires more than we can spare in any given year and maintain a healthy economy.  So we borrow the rest, year after year.

This year’s federal deficit is 1.2 trillion, last year’s was 1.2 trillion and next year’s is projected to be over one trillion as well.  Our national debt, the sum total of our annual deficits, is well over 16 trillion.  And all of that is on top of the tens of trillions of dollars in “off-the-books” future obligations to entitlement programs.

When you are in a hole, stop digging, or so the advice goes.  But what do you do when voters keep electing politicians who won’t put down the shovel, but hold to the insane notion that we can somehow dig our way out?  read more »

Democrats haven’t passed a budget in years, yet somehow it’s Republicans’ fault that the country is about to go over a fiscal cliff.

Harry Reid’s Democratic-controlled Senate has, for three consecutive years, refused to pass a federal budget or even bring a proposal to the floor as required by law.  In 2011 Reid announced that passing a budget would be “foolish” because of ongoing negotiations over other fiscal matters.  Senator Chuck Schumer declared that proposing budgets was “not the point” of the Senate.  read more »