Debt an economic disaster of biblical proportions

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 6: (L-R) Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), John Barrasso (R-WY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Jon Kyl (R-TX) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) speak to reporters about the looming deadline on raising the federal debt limit and stated the republican's rejection of short term deals offered by Democrats, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, July 6, 2011. (Melina Mara)

To use the terminology the Obama administration is using as they push for a debt ceiling increase, the United States is headed for an economic “disaster of biblical proportions.”

The administration says that if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd, there will be “catastrophic economic and market consequences.” At the recent Twitter town hall, President Obama compared the mainstream conservative position on the debt ceiling negotiations to “a gun against the heads” of Americans.

As I recently wrote in a post for On Faith, our nation’s current debt crisis is a moral problem, and it is important to examine how we got in this situation so we can determine how to get out of it.

While revenue is projected to maintain, and even exceed, its yearly average, spending is increasing from the average 20 percent of GDP to 24.7 percent of GDP this year. With this increase in spending, we have seen an explosion in debt. Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the national debt has increased from $10.6 trillion to $14.3 trillion; that’s a 33 percent increase in the national debt in two and a half years. That pace is unsustainable, and in a word, immoral.

Conservatives in Congress have had enough of the insanity. Congresswoman Diane Black, (R-Tenn.) along with 76 freshmen members of Congress, is urging “the president to stop sitting on the sidelines of this debate” and put forward “a package of significant spending cuts and structural reforms.” The American people sent a clear message to Washington last November: cut spending and stop saddling our children and our grandchildren with this uncontrollable debt.

President Obama acknowledged months ago that we cannot continue “running up the credit card anymore.” Yet, the key focus of the president and Democrats’ approach to the debt is to raise taxes on Americans who already provide the government with the majority of its tax revenue. This is repugnant to the conservative-controlled House of Representatives, so it is not even a realistic proposal. Social conservatives believe that it is moral to cut taxes. (Read the blog post about that very topic here.)

As Freshman Representative James Lankford (R-Okla.) recently stated, he and the American people “would have preferred that we had dealt with this a long time ago.” Time is getting short, and as he said, “I don’t think there is a whole lot of energy in the House for a short-term increase.”

The president must act now to “do something big” – cut spending, lower the debt and stop threatening our highest earners and biggest spenders with higher taxes.

With China as our biggest creditor, if we do not act, we may experience the consequences Solomon warned of thousands of years ago, “the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.”