Dear Editor,
“The Treasury may need to borrow an extra $1.6 trillion to cover the hole left by the tariff ruling and pay a further $400 billion in debt interest” Fortune
Tariffs were and are taxes. They hurt everyone, and those with the least the most. If we have to have tariffs, perhaps, they should be dedicated to paying down the debt not spending it willy nilly on things the President would like. How many more trillions can we borrow without making our money worthless? A currency backed by a bankrupt country is definitely something people won’t accept.
Americans as we near fiscal bankruptcy we are also reaching a moral bankruptcy. Get your wheel barrel out to pay the price of debt and your Bible to remind you where you stand. This is not the end of times, but it could be the end of our time.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe much of this moral decline will pass as soon as people see that they ve become part of it. I’m not so sure many of us will understand what debt does to a country or a home. It is existential, you only feel it when they start taking things away, your Social Security, your healthcare, your job, your home, your car. That’s what happens when you can’t pay your bills.
Why are we borrowing money when we live in such a wealthy country, why is our debt equal to or more than all the goods and services we produce in America (GDP) every year. I believe the political elite and their wealthy backers are hanging us out to dry. They have more than they need, but it is never enough until they have yours too. We are all left with the debt they’ve created for us. They’ve lied to us to get our votes. We get the crumbs and they eat the cake. Tax breaks are mortgages on our future unless we have more taxes than we can spend. Yes, we’ll take them as there is nothing else to do. Many of us are no longer taxed because they’ve gotten everything we have already, that is the truth of it. Why aren’t we taxing the wealthy more? It comes to mind that they are the Americans who buy our leaders with political donations.
I once asked a friend of mine who was running for county commissioner if he would back a proposal to fund something the county needed, he answered me honestly, “No, because those funding his campaign didn’t want it.” In Washington it is the same, things don’t happen because the people with money don’t want it too.
If there was any support for ending our national debt it is not among the wealthy elite because they know that they are the ones who will be paying it. It is very likely that they are the ones holding that debt and sucking our blood. It is those who benefit the most from our debt that should be paying the most towards ending it. If we want honesty, we really do need to tax the wealthy more, they’ll never be poor.
Unless Congress gets some balls and acts in the interest of the people rather than their donors, we are likely to have hard times from now on. The treasury is going to borrow 1.7 trillion dollars in our name, and we have little or no say in it. They’ve passed their “Big Beautiful Bill”, and we’ll be paying for it the rest of our lives.
Richard King
Covington
