Current Events vs. Founding Documents

Our Debt - It's For The Children

Posted by Mark Musselman on Oct. 28, 2012

Constitution, 10th amendment

Entry 165

Current Event

According to PoliticFact.com; August 21st, 2012

$50,000. That's what every child owes today because Washington politicians have run up a huge spending tab and left our kids the bill."

U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta’s two children, Colby and Jack, are still years away from college. But, like every other child in the country, they’re already facing thousands of dollars of federal debt, according to the first-term Congressman.

"$50,000," Guinta, a Manchester Republican, says in an ad, "Future," released August 21, 2012 on New Hampshire airwaves. "That's what every child owes today because Washington politicians have run up a huge spending tab and left our kids the bill."

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According to CBS News; September 4, 2012

As national debt passes $16 trillion, GOP blasts Obama's policies

 (CBS News) Hours before Democrats were set to officially kick off the Democratic National Convention, the Treasury Department on Tuesday announced that the national debt has surpassed $16 trillion for the first time in American history - giving Republicans fodder for criticism as Democrats celebrate their party and the president.

In a statement following the announcement, House Speaker John Boehner targeted President Obama's economic record, casting the news as "another sad reminder of President Obama's broken promise to cut the deficit in half."

"This debt is a drain on our economy and a crushing burden on our kids and grandkids, and it's yet another indication that the president's policies have made things worse," he argued.

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Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, warned that the U.S. is on a "dramatically unsustainable path," and accused the president of being "strangely unconcerned."

"This is a grim landmark for the United States. The gross debt of our federal government will, for the first time, surpass $16 trillion," said Sessions. "That's more government debt per person than Portugal, Italy, Spain, or Greece. Yet the President seems strangely unconcerned."

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On Monday, Mr. Obama said he was not ready to give himself a grade on fixing the economy, telling a reporter that he would rather give himself a rating of "incomplete."

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Our Ruling:

Guinta’s terminology is clouded. Children alone aren’t paying for the debt, and they certainly don’t owe any money today. But, taking a step back, as the Congressman tries to illustrate the weight of the debt, his numbers are on target as long as they are spread across the entire population, at this moment in time.

To pay off the debt, each person in the country, including children,would have to pay an average of $50,810 -- slightly above Guinta’s $50,000 figure.

We rate his claim Mostly True.

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According to the Heritage Foundation

Top 10 Percent of Earners Paid 71 percent of Income Taxes:

Top earners are the target for new tax increases, but the U.S. tax system is already highly progressive. The top 1 percent of income earners paid 40 percent of all federal income taxes in 2007, while the bottom 50 percent paid only 3 percent. More than one-third of U.S. earners paid no federal income tax at all.

VS

The President and Congress vs. The Constitution and Jeffersonian principles on debt

Founding Document

US Constitution, 10^th Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

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"We believe--or we act as if we believed--that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons, of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:357

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"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world." --Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1820.

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"I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared."  - Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer, July 21, 1816

We the People:

If the federal government avoided spending on programs prohibited to it by the tenth amendment, our children would not be in this mess. The students who vote for President Obama’s utopia are authorizing him to spend their future earnings on today’s programs. Do they realize it?

In regard to fairness; forget about percentages - look how much the top earners already pay in taxes.  We cannot blame them for the enormous national debt.   And yet this president continues to campaign on the distraction of class warfare and government regulation instead of reduced spending.  How many of today’s students will want to seek their fortunes here if the government will take it away?