BY RUSSELL TURNER
THE GOVERNMENT CASINO
Over the past several years the state of Oklahoma has seen a building boom; while all of the uppity-ups like to brag about all of the building going up, we need to look at all the percentages, both good and bad. Much of the building is in the form of casinos located on tribal land. I have noticed that several of my acquaintances always want to strike it big at the gambling tables. Granted, sometimes they will have a run of good luck and hit the jackpot, but more times they will be on the losing side. I have noticed that they are reluctant to tell about the losing wager, but they are very eager to tell about the times they do actually win on a wager. When it comes to people involved in government, they also seem to be infected with the same malady that prevents the gambler from telling the whole story.
Recently the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a pretty sobering report about the state of Uncle Sam’s finances-- and what the future holds. The main topic of the report was the projection of the federal budget deficit over the next couple of years. For the past several decades, the government has spent FAR more than its tax revenue in almost every single year. This is a very, very long-term trend. Our government does not have the ability to make ends meet. According to estimates by the CBO, the yearly deficit will exceed 1 trillion dollars per year by 2020. Our national debt already exceeds 21 trillion dollars and it is a fact that the government already spends FAR more than its entire tax revenue JUST on the top four programs: Social Security, Medicare, Defense, and Interest on the Debt. Most economists agree that the only solution to our dilemma is for our economy to grow our way out of the problem. I also believe growth is the only solution, but we need to take a hard look at the task ahead of our nation.
Over the past 12 months the US economy grew by 2.9%; while that is a huge improvement over the last several years, we need to factor in the increase of the national debt. During the same period of time our national debt grew by 6.4%. When you do the math our problem becomes crystal clear, our debt is growing more than twice as fast as our economy. For fiscal year 2017, the government spent a record $458 billion on interest… nearly half a trillion dollars. That’s about 30% higher than they spent on interest in 2012, and 13% higher than in 2015. The more the government’s interest payments grow the more money they have to borrow just to pay interest on the money they’ve already borrowed. With more baby boomers retiring every day the problem will only get worse; feeling good about a growing economy is fine, but we need to look at the outflow of money as well. Maybe we Americans have gotten into the casino philosophy, for all of our sakes we need to keep it out of the government arena.
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