Photo by Ozzie Stern on Unsplash
February 2021
I have heard from various sources, including the talking heads in the media and people I know and highly respect, that we all need to understand that the national debt needs attention. Interestingly, these last four years the Senators of what is now the new minority Republican party inflated the national debt far beyond all previous measure. Now it seems they have have found religion and want new majority Democratic party take steps to curtail spending.
Democrats who now control both houses of the Congress intend to legislate a follow up stimulus package to help the economic victims of Covid19. Republicans are opposing this action on the grounds that it would be harmful to the national debt that they over inflated during the four-year Trump debacle.
Among their stable of talking points is that ‘when the country gives its citizens a financial stimulus, all it accomplishes is the government loaning the taxpayers’ money back to them. Eventually, those same taxpayers will need to pay it back with interest.
I look at this issue as water and fire. Right now the Covid19 killing fire is raging and people the world over need water to fight the flames. Millions of our citizens who lost their livelihoods or their insurance or health have become financially insecure and in desperate need of help because of Covid19. None of us needs to have caught the disease to become a victim of it. Our entire nation is under siege. Sure the water will need to be replenished by our nation of citizens over time. The distribution of the ‘water’ and its replenishment will test the notion of America as a nation.
But those of us who by luck, or the Grace of God, or wise investment, have dependable reservoirs, need to share that wealth now. The debt that we all share is huge. While the stimulus will give many of our citizens desperately needed funds to survive, it will, at the same time, enrich others like my wife and me, who are fortunately not now in immediate financial danger.
While we are always grateful for more income, we feel uncomfortable taking what is for us “disposable” income from funds primarily intended to help people in need. Accordingly, we have decided to donate our stimulus windfall where it will do more good: to not-for-profit organizations we support.
This is our choice, but one does not have to emulate that to make the stimulus work.
By simply spending the stimulus to purchase goods or services, we will put the stimulus funds into circulation as intended. Those who spend their shares of the stimulus will fuel our economy to help create jobs and spread the wealth. It will shower much needed water onto our nation’s economic intense flames.
It may not put out the fire by itself, but it will buy our economy and our country much needed time to recover from the aftermath of the past four years and its outlandish QuackAnon /Twilight Zone conspiracy theories.
There is a time and place for everything. These are deeply troubled times.
If we don’t care for those in need, what is America all about?
Blowin' My Own Horn 