Glenn Beck: It’s Past Time to Tighten the Belt
CNN talker and radio personality Glenn Beck writes today on “the $53 trillion asteroid” that, according to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, “threatens to destroy America’s future prosperity.” The impact of this “asteroid”, Beck warns, is almost beyond comprehension.
Let me give you three numbers that will put this economic asteroid into perspective: $200 billion, $14.1 trillion, and $53 trillion.
$200 billion is the approximate total amount of write-downs announced so far as a result of the current credit crisis. $14.1 trillion is the size of the entire U.S. economy And $53 trillion is (drum roll please) the approximate size of this country’s bill for the Social Security and Medicare promises we’ve made.
I encourage you to read the entire article yourself. The numbers are nothing new, but they’re worth paying attention to, especially given that it’s an election year. I doubt that any of the three contenders for the presidency — McCain, Hillary or Obama — are likely to cut the fat from the federal budget. Still, the more Americans that get behind the fact that government spending is way out of control (and has been out of control for decades) the better.
It’s past time that we issue major cuts to the entitlement programs, reform how the government handles Social Security, abolish the utterly failed “War on Drugs” and re-establish the purpose and meaning of the “War on Terror.”
After that (or perhaps before), lower the tax burden on every earning bracket in America.
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