The way Thomas Jefferson handled the national debt should serve as a blueprint for today. But instead, modern presidents look more like college students on a spending spree with their first credit cards.
As Democrats and Republicans shadowbox in their fake debt ceiling fight, the US government continues to spend money at an extraordinary clip. Just four months into fiscal 2023 and the US federal budget deficit is already approaching half a trillion dollars.
We all know how the debt ceiling fight will end. Congress will raise the borrowing limit and the government will keep right on spending money.
That reveals the nature of the problem. It’s not the debt ceiling. It’s the spending.
When Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he inherited a $19.95 trillion federal debt. He handed over a $27.75 trillion debt to Joe Biden. In just four years, the Trump administration added $7.8 trillion to the national debt.
Joe Biden took up right where Trump left off. In October, the national debt blew past $31 trillion. It now stands at $31.46 trillion. It will remain there until the fake debt ceiling fight resolves and it will then spike quickly toward $32 trillion.
But this isn’t just a Trump/Biden problem. Every modern president inherited a huge national debt and managed to expand it during their time in office. In fact, since 1940, every successive presidential administration has spent more than the previous administration in inflation-adjusted dollars.
But there was a time when some presidents took paying off Uncle Sam’s debts seriously. For instance, Thomas Jefferson faced a huge national debt when he took office in 1800. But unlike his modern counterparts, he didn’t grow it further. In fact, he significantly whittled down the debt.
Jefferson and his fellow Democrat-Republicans in Congress knocked about $26 million ($420.8 million in 2018 dollars) off the debt through his two terms in office — this despite taking on an additional $13 million of added debt for the Louisiana Purchase.
How did they do it?
Well, it was pretty simple. They cut spending and applied the savings toward paying down debt.
Jefferson summed up his budget policy in a letter to Elbridge Gerry in 1799, writing:
“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partizans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of it’s being a public blessing.”
Talking about Jefferson, one of the GREATEST presidents in our history is………………..racist.
There are literally MIILIONS of people who don’t know who he is or what he did.
Because teaching them about him would be RACIST.
Soon, there will be a complete erasure of our history. NO ON will know, or if they do, be allowed to talk about him or any of the things that helped us go from a ragtag group of 13 boisterous and independent colonies to the greatest economic force in history. And the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.
Thank God -every day- that CHINA or RUSSIA doesn’t have the power we do. You’d be speaking their language and watching what you say to your neighbors.
And getting re-educated for saying the wrong thing.
The re-education part seems to be already going strong here now….
Thank you, democrats.