Faineant Fiscalism: The National Debt

Faineant Fiscalism At this moment, the national debt exceeds $18.8 trillion (U.S. Debt Clock). The national debt is the amount of money that the federal government owes to citizens, companies, and other governments. As time passes, this disaster will only worsen. The amount owed per person will skyrocket in the lives of the current youth generation. This issue is extremely imperative because if left alone, there will be economic conditions so horrible in the future that it will be detrimental to the prosperity of today’s youth generation. The national debt is maintained because of the budget deficit. Each year, the government creates a budget in an attempt to balance funds, and each year there are more expenses than revenue. A large amount
of money is spent on entitlement programs, programs that provide free services to citizens. Many argue that these programs are essential to maintaining a high quality society and that it would be inhumane to reduce funds to them. Although government programs help provide citizens with opportunities to prosper, they greatly contribute to the national debt, social welfare programs should be minimized in order to reduce the national debt, too much money is spent on programs such as education reform, unemployment, and health care, which are very ineffective. Far too much money is delegated to education funds. Over $70 billion a year is spent on education reform (Layton 1). Education reform should not be a priority of the national government. The federal government simply does not have the capability to monitor the education needs of each state. Instead, the power to regulate education should be devolved to state governments. This idea is supported by many political scientists. Recently, the No Child Left Behind Act was repealed, which gave the federal government more power in decisions regarding education (Layton 1). One may argue that reducing funds to education hinders a child’s ability to learn and develop workplace skills. Although this has merit, funding will not be completely out of the school system. State governments will still be able to designate money to education. State governments will learn it be more responsible with funds and will adapt to balancing a budget. In summation, too much money is designated to an ineffective problem. This problem greatly contributes to the national debt. With the deletion of these funds, about 10% of the budget deficit can be reduced per year. Unfortunately, this is not the only program that uses too much unneeded money. Another program that needs to be reformed is unemployment and the criteria to be eligible for it. Unemployment programs are extremely costly and serve too many people who do not need the benefits. Unemployment benefits currently expands over a period of 24 months. This is far too long. Many political scientists and analysts, including Alison Acosta Fraser, agree that the credentials for unemployment benefits should be much more strict (25). In 2015 alone, over $320 billion was spent on unemployment benefits (Federal Spending 1). To further exemplify this claim, the national debt would be reduced by over 15% per year if the limit to reap unemployment benefits was reduced to 12 months. Opponents of this theory argue that this is inhumane and forces Americans to settle for an undesirable job. Although this initially appears to be true, 12 months is still a generous amount of time to find a job. Any educated person, if applying his/her skills, can find a job within a year. Far too much money is spent on people who do not need it. Over 35% of Americans regularly use social welfare programs while only 14% of Americans are in poverty (Biggs 1). Overall, unemployment benefits should be decreased greatly. They greatly contribute to the national debt and continues to grow. This will cause many problems for the United States in the future and action must be taken now. Along with unnecessary benefits from unemployment insurance is healthcare, a program that makes unemployment look like pocket change. Healthcare reform is the greatest disaster in the United States since 9/11.
Outrageous amounts of money are spent on healthcare reform. In the next ten years, Obamacare, a program that provides healthcare for all, is set to spend over $1.2 trillion (Federal Spending 1). This is more than double what is needed. Half of this should be cut and be used to start paying off the national debt. If this is done in one short term payment, the interest on the debt will shrink, saving a great deal of money every year. Similarly, Obamacare was a failure, less than half of expected users enrolled in the program. As a result, the program is ineffective and should lose funding. Political scientist George Will postulates that “...entitlements are the fastest growing personal income” (1). This proves that these programs should be cut. Many argue that this program is too beneficial to lose funding. This has been proven completely false as Obamacare initially had too few people sign up for the program to be effective (Will 1). In conclusion, healthcare programs should drastically lose funding. They are a major factor that leads to the growth of the national debt. If this program is cut, it will begin a period of economic success in the United
States. Although entitlement programs can be helpful, overall; they are detrimental to society and contribute to the national debt, programs such as education, unemployment, and health care should lose funding because of their ineffective nature.
These proposed plans would reduce the deficit by over $300 billion per year. This is not the final solution to America’s economic dilemma, but will create a chain reaction to reduce spending nationwide. If the national debt continues to grow at this rate, today’s teenagers will live to see the day where the United States is over $100 trillion in debt; something needs to change, and spending cuts are the only
solution.