Bankrupt—and Losing International Influence

By Rense Johnson, Chairman, Citizens for Term Limits

In one of Robert Novak’s closed, not-for-attribution meetings recently, I heard a highly-placed member of government state that manufacturing represents 24% of the U. S. economy, while the service sector amounts to 60%. There seemed to be no other eyebrows raised, but I was flabbergasted. How has the United States gotten in such condition? Sixty percent service sector? Not only are we broke, (please see below) we are no longer a world class power. Our extinction as a country to be reckoned with is only a matter of time, unless something is done about it soon.

Boston University’s Dr. Laurence Kotlikoff recently wrote an article asking the question, Is the United States Bankrupt? — which he then answers in the affirmative. The conclusion is reenforced that our bankruptcy has been a long time developing. Today’s economic reality has a political genesis which has ripened over the decades, as year after year, self-centered career politicians have dominated and bankrupted our nation.

A succession of profligate, irresponsible Congresses and their careerist members. has appropriated every dollar of the debt that Dr. Kotlikoff writes about.

Two points which bear this out:

1. According to an article that appeared in Investor’s Business Daily in February 1993, studies for the House Joint Economic Committee revealed that since 1947, every time the government has raised an incremental new dollar in taxes, it has managed to spend $1.50. Think of it! Since right after World War II, it’s been a dollar in, a dollar and a half out . . . A billion in, a billion and a half out . . . A trillion in . . . well, you get the idea. For sixty years.
2. According to Stephen Moore of Human Events, [former] Treasury Secretary John Snow recently announced that the total unfunded liabilities of the United States government add up to eighty trillion dollars. “Ouch!” Moore wrote. “That’s a debt load equivalent to about six times our current GDP. It is almost twice as much as the value of all goods and services produced everywhere in the world last year. And it is more money than has been earned by every American cumulatively since the Mayflower landed here [400] years ago.”

The war on terror makes the bankruptcy even more dire.

A symptom of our country’s bankruptcy is its declining dollar value. We are reminded of this as we watch price inflation manifest itself in everything we buy.

Vice Chairman and a cofounder of Citizens for Term Limits is Dr. Leo Richard, deep thinker and market analyst extraordinaire, who believes that congressional term limitation is an imperative first step toward the only way to bring about monetary reform, i.e., a return to the Gold Standard, replacing our present fiat dollar.

Because it is imperative to identify root causes for poisonous facts, we must affirm that limitation of congressional terms is essential for national survival.

Citizens for Term Limits

Citizens for Term Limits had its beginnings when a group of amateurs, with unexpected help from unexpected sources, persuaded the Louisiana Legislature to amend that state’s constitution to limit their own terms. (The LORD was sitting on our shoulder.) Louisiana is likely still the only state to have limited legislators’ terms by constitutional amendment instead of the ballot initiative.

Length of the limits? It is obvious that career politicians must be replaced. We believe six years in the House of Representatives (three two-year terms) and six years in the Senate (one six-year term) is proper for the nation. The longer these people stay there, the more time they have to forget who sent them, and who their bosses are — the people.

Most of these careerists are also Earmark Addicts. They brag so loudly about the pork they bring back to the District or State that they would have us overlook the logrolling that is necessary before that pork can be brought home. That is, in order to get theirs, they have to vote for everyone else’s. Result: escalation of our debt. Read: Bankruptcy.

On Fox News recently commentator and Weekly Standard Editor Fred Barnes said *“If [Republicans] came out against all earmarks it would help [their political fortunes] more than anything else.”* Barnes also supports term limitation.

A Congress populated with public servants who go to Washington to serve—serve their neighbors and their country—would likely be able to conduct the nation’s business in 25 percent of the time, with 25 percent of the committees and subcommittees, and perhaps five percent as many ego-driven television virtuosos as we have now.

Sending careerists home. Six years and six years. Restoration of America as primarily a manufacturing nation. Total elimination of pork.

What blessings those would be.

What a great start!

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