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We’ve all heard about the experiment with the frog in the cauldron. The story goes something like this: You throw a frog into a cauldron of boiling water, obviously it’s DOA.
But if you put a frog in a cauldron of water and turn up the heat only slightly, the frog will splash around having a good old time.
Bring the heat up a little bit more and the frog is taking a warm tubby at this point, not a problem.
Turn the heat up more and more and before the frog figures out what’s happening, he’s in boiling water and dies a terrible death.
Well, today we’re all frogs, and America is the cauldron. The federal government is turning up the heat, and we don’t even notice.
“What heat?” you might ask. How about the heat of federal expansionism at a rate unheard of in the history of the United States. An expansionism of federal executive powers, first into the banking system and then, within weeks, into the automotive sector. Does anybody question expansionism of the federal government when it can dip down as far as the Renaissance Center and fire Rick Wagoner as chairman of GM?
Now, if that’s not enough, how about an expansionist federal takeover of both the energy sector and the health-care sector of our country, all within a breathtaking first year of the Obama administration. Projected costs to the taxpayers: at least a trillion-plus dollars to federalize the energy sector; additional costs to the taxpayers of $1.7 trillion to nationalize health care.
Let’s look at the current finances of the United States. Frankly, they were not a pretty picture under George Bush. But today we look back at the Bush era as the “good old days” when it comes to management of the national debt. Today, the “accumulated” national debt is approximately $11.4 trillion. The deficit, on an annual basis, is calculated at over $2 trillion-plus and rising. Just the interest payment on the accumulated national debt is $500 billion. … Let me spell that out: $500,000,000,000.
What could we do with $500 billion when it comes to highway projects? Educational reform? Health reform? Hell, if we could be spared a $500-billion interest payment, we could all have our own doctor living in the spare bedroom.
So here comes more heat now to our national cauldron. Unemployment nationally is about to hit 10%, an embarrassingly high number that will trigger all sorts of panic in the halls of Congress. So what’s the early response from the Obama administration and its many friends in Congress to 10% unemployment? To go to a “second stimulus package.” The initial hundreds of billions of dollars shoveled out the back door in the first stimulus package was so successful (not!) let’s emulate the “successes” of that package and offer the public a second stimulus package. What’s another half billion to trillion dollars added to the escalating deficit? Forget the fact that the first stimulus package was a colossal failure. Forget the fact that the only way to fund a second stimulus is to either, a) raise taxes, or b) print more money … both of which are inherently dangerous to the American taxpayer.
A second stimulus package? My friends, that is Washington bringing the heat in the cauldron up to a boil.
What’s missing here is something we all learned in grade school civics class. What was built into our government for over 200 years was a system of checks and balances. This kind of reckless spending is what happens when the system doesn’t have any checks in place.
