Yes, Virginia, There is a Problem …
Lessiter points to Morry Taylor’s ‘creeping menace’ explanation of the national debt & why immediate change is needed
Amidst the screaming vitriol of the “never-changers” on every move President Donald Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are making, I was asked why changes to curtail spending are “really necessary.” True story …
I took a deep breath. And then I referred them to Morry Taylor’s 2024-released book and, specifically, the chapter titled, “The Creeping Menace That Will Destroy America.” It is the clearest and easiest to digest explanation of the national debt threat I recall. We asked for Taylor’s permission to post the chapter – unedited and in its entirety – here.
Read it. The problems outlined by Taylor are the very reason that DOGE exists. You can’t attack a jungle of waste with a nail-clipper. And that’s why Trump put a machete in Elon Musk’s hands.
I learned a long time ago (including from top foundry executives John Keough, Dwight Barnhard, Bruce Jacobs and others) that the surest way to ensure a dollar exists for what’s MOST IMPORTANT and NEEDED is to choke out the wasted spending on all things UNIMPORTANT and UNNEEDED.
“You can’t attack a jungle of waste with a nail-clipper. And that’s why Trump put a machete in Musk’s hands.”
It should be a maxim for today’s generation – and applies to one’s personal life, business, church tithes and support of whatever is passionate to the individual. You may spend your OWN dollar any way you want; but the dollar that is not yours is not yours to throw around loosely, either.
Because of decades of wild government spending and an absolute lack of accountability (both parties can be blamed for that), the chickens have come home to roost. Yes, it will be painful for those who’ve long been suckling on the government’s teat. Unfortunately for some worthy causes – including farming – the inconvenience may need to initially get worse before it gets better. But it will, because the voids for what is truly deserving of support will be readily apparent.
“You may spend your OWN dollar any way you want; but the dollar that is not yours is not yours to throw around loosely...”
And by the time the spending spigot is secured and oversight and accountability is put in the right place (including state control where monitoring and responsibility can be assumed), WORTHY programs may find even more resources when all is said and done. I’m convinced that the “principal of the and” applies here; we can have support for needed causes AND monitored oversight.
Don’t like it? Then, don’t let history repeat itself …
“It will be painful for those who’ve long been suckling on the government’s teat.”
You can commit – along with an insistence of accountability for our elected “stewards” – NOT to quietly look the other way nor applaud drunk-sailor spending approved by quid-pro-quo politics. And you can rid yourselves of the mindset that “well, every other special interest is getting a handout so one is deserved to me as well.”
That’s precisely how we got here…
Related Content
Morry Taylor on the National Debt: ‘The Creeping Menace That Will Destroy America’
By Morry Taylor, excerpted from 2024 book Trump: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Against the backdrop of the election nonsense, "threats to democracy" and all that, don't forget that our only hope for our future, a future that only a second-term President Trump can bring about, is to address the economic monster that surely will take our country down if we don't tackle it: the national debt.
You can forget about all your other worries for this country, because they don't make any difference compared with America's $36 trillion in debt. And over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, we’re on pace to add $20 trillion more onto the pile of future obligations, which will suffocate the next generations. By 2034 the deficit is predicted to be $56 trillion. That total includes a $2 trillion budget deficit for 2024, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just projected in June some $400 billion more than it forecasted in February despite an economy that is not in recession.
So while Donald Trump may have other priorities after he takes the presidential oath of office again on January 20, 2025, he needs to listen to me on this one: Attack the budget deficit and national debt over every other priority. History, and our grandkids, will be grateful for it and call you blessed and it will do our country a hell of a lot of good in the meantime.
You see, the national debt is not just some kind of abstract financial beach ball that you keep bouncing around to someone else and that never actually lights on anyone. It's more like a medicine ball, a ponderous object that lands with a painful and decisive thud on whomever ends up catching it.
Take the national crises caused by illegal immigration, natural disasters, fentanyl and any other problem you want to name, roll them all together — and they still don't pose the kind of threat to this country's existence that the national debt does. It's a menace that has gotten absolutely out of control since Joe Biden took office.
