How Romney can get us out of the deep end

By Nicole Moody     10/24/12 7:00pm

 

With the election fast approaching, presidential campaigns and debates are bringing many issues into the light. A prominent one is deficit spending and its impact on the debt. So what exactly does the term "deficit spending" mean? Suppose that you want to purchase something that costs ten thousand dollars, but unfortunately, you only have $6,400. To buy what you want, you have to make up for what you don't have by borrowing the difference. The amount of money that you're short, $3,600, is a deficit. If you continue to spend in this way, year after year, the total deficit spending is your debt. 

These numbers aren't arbitrary. For every dollar that the federal government spends, it borrows 36 cents, which doesn't seem too harmful until you look at the scale of government spending. The current amount of money spent by Congress and approved by President Obama is over $3.5 trillion every year, racking up a trillion dollars a year of deficit spending, and those owed quarters, dimes, and nickels have really added up; the U.S. is now more than $16 trillion in debt, making the debt owed by each citizen around $51,000 and growing. The money that the United States government owes will not disappear on its own. Our current government will pass the bill to the next generation, forcing our children to suffer with a crippled economy, and if the debt grows large enough, it will outstrip spending on all social programs and the military combined. 

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Obama has not done enough to stop the deficit; in fact, he enacted policies that exploded deficit spending, creating a legacy of debt. Under his administration, the debt increased from nine to sixteen trillion dollars owed through his policies of bailouts, regulation and enlarging the government. According to Congressional Office calculations, President Obama's budget for the 2012 fiscal year places the nation on a trajectory that will increase federal spending over the next ten years, nearly doubling the amount it was when Obama took office. President Obama is not only failing to stop the deficit, he's increasing it. 

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, plans to take action against the deficit, putting a hard cap on federal spending and forcing Washington to overcome its addiction to deficit spending. By eliminating wasteful spending and shrinking an oversized government, Romney will be able to save taxpayer dollars and even increase government revenue. By getting the government out of the marketplace through spending cuts, a great amount of market uncertainty will be eliminated, and entrepreneurs will once again gain confidence and invest, hiring more employees, creating more jobs, increasing salaries and thus increasing the amount of tax revenue. 

We have a choice. We can choose to reelect a president who has spent $200 billion more in one term than all previous presidents combined, or to elect a businessman with fiscal experience who will bend the spending curve downward to stop reckless spending. The health of our future economy will depend on the president's fiscal responsibility, so be decisive, and choose wisely. 

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