U.S. deficit runs wild
1984Hayden Perry 1984-07Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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Like a cancerous tumor the national debt is growing and swelling in the bowels of the American economy. From a debt of $43 billion in 1940, this national obligation has ballooned in 1982 to the incredible sum of $1,269,000,000,000. That is one trillion, two hundred and sixty nine billion dollars. And the debt is growing faster and faster, at the rate of $27 million an hour. It took 193 years for the nation's debt to reach $1 trillion in 1981. It is estimated that it will grow another $1 trillion in five years if nothing is done to stop this slide to disaster.
National debts have not always been disasters. President Franklin Roosevelt fostered an increase in the debt to pump money into the ailing economy. The huge expenses of World Wars 1 and Il forced the government to borrow heavily. But this was handled with ease.
With patriotic rallies in every town whipping up the war spirit, millions of citizens were persuaded to lend money directly to the government by buying war bonds. About 75 million Americans bought bonds in World War II, absorbing half the new debt at an interest rate of less than 2 percent.
The Vietnam War could not be financed by selling war bonds at 2 percent interest. It was not officially a war. How would it sound to be peddling "Peace Action Bonds!" Besides, any bond salesman would have been bowled over by the thousands of marching feet of antiwar protesters. So President Lyndon Johnson had to sell his bonds to the banks, insurance companies, and speculators at double the interest rates. Interest rates started an upward climb and national debt began to grow.
This tumor could have been excised at the start by taxation. The national debt could have been controlled by adequately taxing part of the vast corporate and individual wealth piled up in the richest country in the world. But this approach violates a cardinal principle of both the Republican and Democratic parties. You don't bite the hand that feeds you-you don't tax the wealthy who pay your campaign bills.
Even if Congress passes a tax law (continued on page 10, in “Los Presos Politicos”)