America Deserves To Default

It is what we have earned for ourselves

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

According to estimates by the US Treasury, the United States is just days away from defaulting on its massive debt obligations. If you are surprised to hear that, you shouldn’t be. This annual (and sometimes biannual) ritual has been going on for years. The US spends too much money, doesn’t collect enough taxes, and then raises the debt ceiling to authorize the proper authorities to borrow or print more money. Oftentimes, the debt ceiling is raised at the last second in connection with some omnibus spending bill that kicks the can down the road and increases deficit spending. Unfortunately, that can is all but spent and we are rapidly running out of road.

This time, the government is cutting it closer than ever before, which has made default more likely than ever before. And honestly, this is exactly what we deserve. This is a systemic failure that stretches from President Biden all the way down to the most obscure junior Representative. Americans willfully put this government together. For decades, Americans have gleefully ignored spending problems, growing deficits, and looming financial issues. Now Americans must grapple with the probability of default and all that entails.

Because the growing debt is nothing new, and every administration has added to it since at least 2000. Clinton was the last president to actually try and do anything about the debt and deficit (ironic) and that was when our problems were a mere fraction of what they are now.

Republicans turned a blind eye when George W. Bush nearly doubled the national debt from 2001 until 2008. The War on Terror was important. Saddam Hussein had to go. ($5 trillion to $9 trillion.)

Democrats turned a blind eye when Barack Obama sent the debt from $12 trillion to $20 trillion. The economy was in bad shape. The government needed to do something. (+$8 trillion.)

No one seemed to be alarmed that the debt had soared from $5 trillion in 2000 to $20 trillion in 2017. A tripling of the debt during that time.

Then it was again the Republicans’ turn to ignore the problem. Donald Trump jacked the debt from roughly $20 trillion to $28 trillion in just four years. That is a rate of $2 trillion per year—an…