Republicans holding us hostage yet again.

[timmah]

I honestly don't understand how anyone can believe we can continue adding to the national debt in perpetuity with no dire consequences at some point in the (near) future. One major problem with continuing to add to the debt is that it makes our spending far less effective. This is because every year we have more debt, a greater percentage of government spending must go towards payments of principal and interest on that debt. To me, this should tick off the left as much as the right. If the goal of the left is really to help the poor, then it is pretty obvious that paying more interest to other countries on more debt is diverting money away from helping the poor and building infrastructure in the long run.

It's really very simple, if a family were to start putting 20% of their net expenditures on credit cards every year, the payments on those cards will continue to grow until this practice stops. This will lead to the necessity to put more on the credit card each year just to pay basic expenses. Eventually all of the income of the family would need to be diverted to the credit cards just to keep up with the minimum payments, the banks would close the accounts due to default, and the family would be destined for bankruptcy. In other words, the family would be forced to take drastic measures because they refused to take common sense measures when they had the chance.

We need to balance the budget, this is necessary both economically and morally, as I believe it is immoral to take out a debt for our convenience that our children will have to pay. I believe this can be done without hurting those who really need assistance. We as a nation have a duty to help our fellow man, but we must do it wisely so we can afford to keep helping those in need.

Perpetual 'assistance' by way of handouts without job & skill training is not assistance, it is merely leads to keeping the under-educated poor economically crippled and on the dole for life. Government assistance is supposed to be temporary, not a career choice. If our assistance programs are not helping people get on their feet, gain skills, and get a good job, they are broken and merely adding to the problem. A permanent under-class who never gains a skill-set and never enters the workforce is lost economic growth, leading to decreased tax revenue, leading to less ability to help those in need in the future. We don't need to just arbitrarily cut people off and make them starve, but we do need to restructure the system so it actually works. As the old saying goes "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime".