At Some Point, You Have to Stop Digging

I've shied away from commenting on the debt ceiling circus these past few weeks, mostly out of fear that I'll develop a blood-pressure problem. With so much invective being thrown every which way, I find it hard to keep it all in perspective. For decades, the political class has widened the gulf between it and the citizen class, tinkering with a massive Leviathan it no longer understands, much less knows how to control. Sometimes I wish I could just tune it all out. Easier said than done for a news junkie like me.

Tonight, I read this headline: "US borrowing tops 100% of GDP":

US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government's debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday.

What does that mean? It means that our national debt is now greater than or equal to the entire domestic output of our economy. Think about that. As a nation, we owe more than we produce in a year. While not an exact analogy, it is akin to having a personal credit card debt that is greater than your total annual income. It basically puts you at the point that if you don't make changes, you will be unable to keep up in servicing that debt, much less paying it down. Nothing good comes of that. For whatever reason, these people seem to operate under the assumption that you can dig your way out of a hole. Newsflash: it doesn't work that way. You cannot spend your way of out debt.

I've been a part of two corporate downsizings. When your revenue declines, you have to reduce the cost of doing business. The only way to do that is to restructure, and sometimes that restructuring is drastic and painful. You cut big chunks out of your labor, and your business model or market. You divest yourself of non-producing ventures or liabilities.

At some point, I keep hoping that these folks on the hill will figure out that you have to stop digging. That's not going to happen anytime soon, and by the time the next election rolls around, we will be over $2 trillion deeper in debt than we are right now. The debt will increase faster than the cuts they promise will come.

But they just keep digging, singing:

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in our mine the whole day through
To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig is what we really like to do

Heigh-ho. Ugh.