Path to destruction

I am a person who hates debt. I don’t buy a car unless I have saved enough money to pay cash for it. I paid off my home by age 55 by making extra principal payments. I pay credit cards every month so that I don’t pay interest. My children all worked hard and were given a minimal amount of money, and we managed to get them through college (with almost no scholarship money) with no debt. My wife and I did the same thing when attending college without any parental help because they didn’t have the means, and with little scholarship money.

I hear Joe Biden and other politicians tell us that we must raise the debt ceiling “because we are a nation that pays its debts.” But where is that debt coming from? From politicians who continue to spend money so far past our means that there is no hope to ever pay it back. We take in $4.5 trillion and spend over $6 trillion with partisan legislation. Biden unilaterally decides to “forgive” billions of dollars of student loans and then has the audacity to lecture me.

It is sad to say, but there are virtually no politicians, Democrat or Republican, who have the guts to lay their political position aside and do the things necessary to avert financial disaster for this country. We will not change until we are forced to through loss of our credit rating and can no longer just print money to solve our problem. We haven’t done it while it was a manageable problem. We are going to wait until it is an extremely painful problem for the entire country. And then all the politicians will be pointing at each other claiming the others were to blame.

I think the only thing that would work is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution mandating Congress and the president to either raise taxes or spend less, but forbid spending more than we take in. Sadly, short of a convention of the states which will never happen, there will never be a balanced budget amendment. So I will just watch the totally unnecessary failure of this great republic as it continues on the path of its own self-destruction.

GREGG MUELLER

Little Rock