National Deficits and the 7th Commandment

There has been much ballyhooing in the media the last few weeks over a finance bill working it's way through Congress. The bill has captured much media attention namely because President Trump, ever the showman, refers to it as his "Big, Beautiful Bill." This bill is a massive hodge podge of tax cuts, governmental cuts (mostly to baseline budgeting), and other blow out spending pork. 

Baseline budgeting is the primarily guiding philosophical principle to most Federal spending. If you are unfamiliar with this boondoggle of an accounting system, baseline budgeting uses current spending levels as the "baseline" for establishing future funding requirements. On it's face, that seems innocuous, but such a philosophy assumes future budgets will equal the current budget times the inflation rate times the population growth rate. In other words, it factors in percentage growth to the yearly projected budgets en perpetuity. This is how Congress has gotten away with runaway spending and massive deficits for years because it locks in budgetary growth every year as a "baseline." 

In other words, Federal government spending expands every year to meet the needs of expanding government. So, it's better to explain this by example, as it is basically similar to compounded interest but as applied to long term budgets. With baseline budget, you assume there will be 3 to 5% growth in the budget every year as the baseline. So, for example in numbers the human brain can comprehend, if we had a budget this year of $100, we would assume next year's budget will be $105, and the following year, the budget will be $110. 

Every year, you assume the baseline budget will go up 5%. So, in ten years, your budget is will be basically $162.89. If you are scoring at home, here is the calculation for $100 baseline, then:
Future Budget=100×(1.05)^10≈100×1.6289=162.89. So, after 10 years, your budget would grow to about 162.89% of the original amount.

Again, so what? Why does this matter? Well, you can mask your spending as net zero budgetary spending increases using baseline budgeting. "The budget has not increased" even though it has because it assumed 5% growth but that's not factored in for purposes of saying the budget increased. Budget increases using baseline budgeting are only listed as any growth over that baseline 5%. Yeah...it's a screwy system that doesn't work in private enterprise. If I run a business and increase my budget by 5% every year, I have to tell my stockholders that at the annual meeting. I can't just do a baseline 5% increase to my business' operating budget and pass it off as no increase in the budget, but private enterprise does not operate the same as government budgets. Businesses can't just do things like print their own money to cover the 5%. They either have to plan on selling more product and making more profit, or take money from savings (or via loan) or make some cuts to the existing spending. The Federal government does not have to do that. 

This is why when people in Congress start talking about "budget cuts"-it is almost always only cuts to the baseline budget increase. They will say things like a "proposed 2% cut to the Department of Flappery's upcoming budget...oh, the horror!" But with baseline budgeting of 5%, what does that actually mean? Normal people assume it means means we were operating at a 100% budget and next year we have to make due with only 98% of the same amount of money. In Federal Newspeak, that means there is a 2% cut but there is a factored in 5% increase. Thus, a "2% percent cut"-which in normal businesses just breaking even would be somewhat drastic-is actually a 3% increase (instead of a normal 5% increase). 

So, back to the "Big Beautiful Bill." There is much ballyhooing about tax cuts and budget cuts. The problem is, the two do not offset, as there is a lot of other blow out spending added on. So, estimated suggest in will lead to another 2 Trillion dollars (that's $2,000,000,000,000,000.00 for those scoring at home. This on top of the other existing debt of:

 
Keep in mind, this is actual existing debt, not unfunded liabilities. Unfunded liabilities are a type of debt that is not year actualized, i.e. debt we will eventually owe that we have no idea how to fund currently but are eventually on the hook for. For instance, when all the Baby Boomers stop working on go on Medicare that are not currently on Medicare. That will eventually add at least another trillion dollars a year above what we are currently paying on Medicare. As Medicare is a yearly pay as you go type of spending item, that trillion+ a year is an unfunded liability. Our unfunded debt at this moment is:



So, in other words, as of now, what the US government actually owes in actual debt and unfunded liabilities is roughly $141,000,000,000,000.00. This is the debt that we have selfishly saddled future generations, most of whom not even born yet, with. Our great, great, great grandchildren will be paying for our way of living for decades to come. 

Now, I am not blaming all this on Trump or the "Big, Beautiful Bill." They are simply symptoms of a disease that has been growing for almost a century. The last President to have a balanced budget every year of his President was...Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. We've been running a deficit war economy since FDR in the early 1930s. He very clearly said he was creating a war time economy to fix the Great Depression so he could invoke war powers on the Depression. We've never demobilized from a war economy, and we are addicted to debt.  

The Bible is very clear in many places that theft is wrong. When we violate the 7th commandment of "Thou shall not steal"-we are impoverishing others by taking what is theirs unlawfully. The Bible is also clear in numerous places that debt is bad because it is a form of slavery. We have literally sold our descendants into slavery. 

We desperately need to hold our leaders accountable. This type of societal sin simply can't continue or else the Judgment.