America’s chickens are roosting in a train wreck

Rev. Jeremiah Wright infamously declared that America’s chickens had come home to roost. He was speaking of the 9/11 attacks, and his opinion brought him well-deserved scorn. The loosest of canons in the Trinity United Church of Christ may have been justified had he said America’s chickens would roost in the Congressional Rotunda or the Obama White House.

Like hens and roosters, our alleged representatives preened and crowed over the debt ceiling deal they hammered together earlier this week. They’ve mugged for the cameras of a cooperative media, patted each other on the back, and flashed the "thumbs-up" sign. After finishing their latest work -- "on behalf of the American people" -- our federal rulers were all smiles while mopping their brows as if they had just dug a four-mile ditch through rocky ground.

Washington may view their latest contribution to American insolvency as reason to spike the football and exchange high-fives all around. But those of us in the great unwashed see their work as one collective mooning from 535 juvenile delinquents, plus one gigantic bird-flipping from the Delinquent-in-Chief. We’ve been had . . . again! Washington dug a ditch, no doubt. But through that ditch will flow a torrent of red ink, drowning yet another generation of unborn Americans in a debt they didn’t create, authorize, or deserve.

The entire debt ceiling debate was predicated on falsehoods. Didn’t our betters tell us a debt ceiling increase was essential to preventing default and maintaining the nation's stellar credit rating? Wasn't increasing our debt the only way to prevent a stock market collapse? Washington employed a scorched earth strategy on the American people, using misrepresentations and utter lies to instill a false fear in the population. Moody’s promised a wait-and-see attitude toward the latest Washington spending spree and Standard & Poor's issued a downgrade, exactly what the debt ceiling increase was promised to prevent. If our credit rating sinks it will join the New York Stock Exchange, which has faltered since government announced it had approved itself for a new series of loans.

Factually, can extending the national debt breed confidence in America's national creditworthiness, considering the current debt isn't being repaid? If you or I attempted a similar stunt we’d be arrested, tried, and jailed for credit fraud. At the least we’d see our credit lines cancelled and be forced to live within our means. However, to our federal house of lords, living within our collective means makes as much sense as the evening news from Jupiter’s third moon. Nothing has changed. Washington will go on pretending it can borrow its way out of debt, which is as logical as trying to dive out of the ocean.

Not even the numbers make sense. Of course, it’s difficult to imagine numbers in the trillions. So let’s put them in perspective. If each dollar of the current $14.57 trillion national debt equaled one second of time, the total debt would equal 462,011 years. And we don’t have a debt problem? The figures Washington elites have tossed about don’t add up, either.

The debt ceiling deal promises spending cuts of $2.1 trillion over 10 years, or $210 billion annually. Conversely, the government can now borrow an additional $2.4 trillion, which will satisfy Washington’s credit appetite only until 2013. We can add another $3.3 trillion in federal tax revenues to what Washington will “borrow” over the next 16 months. If the intent weren't to spend the entire $3.3 trillion, the borrowed funds wouldn’t be necessary. And if the borrowing will only feed the government beast for 16 months, the intent must be to spend all revenues, both collected and borrowed. Thus Congress and the White House plan to blow through $5.7 trillion by January 2013, an average of $356 billion per month.

Math isn’t my strongest subject. Maybe it isn’t yours either. But this much I know; $5.7 trillion dollars spent in less than a year-and-a-half exceeds $2.1 trillion saved over ten years. And we must accept on faith that the promised “cuts” will actually materialize. Faith, in this case, may as well be a synonym for naiveté. You might have faith in the innate goodness of the snarling pit bull inside your neighbor’s fence. But stick your leg through the gate and the dog will gnaw it to the bone. Government is gnawing us, too, in the wallet and elsewhere.

The debt ceiling plan is pure fantasy. J.K. Rowling couldn’t have written it better. The spending reductions don’t exist. They’re a magician’s trick, at best only slight reductions in the rate of growth. The new debt limit, which will undoubtedly be raised again once it's reached, is our rulers' solemn pledge to spend this nation into oblivion.

The federal government is a runaway train, hurtling down a steep grade and gaining speed. With the cliff in sight, Engineer Obama is pushing the throttle full forward while Senators and Representatives from both parties shovel coal into the firebox. If we don’t pull the brake, hard and quick, the most dynamic economic engine the world has ever known will be a smoldering hunk of mangled steel. All the while our federal chickens cluck, strut, and preen over their latest bipartisan compromise.

Rev. Wright may be proven a prophet after all. America’s chickens are coming home to roost . . . in a train wreck.