The Biggest Issue Young People SHOULD Be Concerned About

Welcome to my new blog. This blog is dedicated to my political musings. I will discuss issues today, politics in general, and things that I feel are important.

So, I have been doing a little research on this health care reform bill, and been trying to figure out where the money for this comes from. I have concluded that it doesn't. This bill simply does not pay for itself. This is not out of the ordinary, considering that most government bills don't, but the sheer size of this bill is concerning. It needs a lot of money in order to succeed, and in the long run I believe that this bill will run up our yearly deficits exponentially, which will eventually lead to a huge national debt.
This leads me to the real issue that I believe all Americans, especially young Americans like me, should be concerned about, and that is the national debt. As it sits today, the national debt sits at about $12.5 trillion. This is about 90% of our GDP. Now, granted, some countries can operate at a much higher % of their GDP, for example Japan is at about 190%, but their government is certainly struggling. The problem I see isn't necessarily the debt now, but what it could be in the future. Last year, the US ran a record breaking deficit of $1.42 trillion. This means that just in 1 year, we added $1.42 trillion to the national debt. And this number is only expected to grow in the future, especially with huge bills such as the health care reform passing without the money to actually pay for it. And even if that bill ends up "paying for itself" like the democrats claim, the country will most likely still be running at a deficit. In all of the years since the 70's, the US government has only run a budget surplus ( a surplus meaning we actually gained money and payed off part of the debt) 4 times, and all 4 were modest at best. The government has become too content with huge budgets that require large amounts of government spending, and tax cuts that mean the government takes in less money to pay for the budgets. I do not see the logic in this.
The problem is that this debt that the government is content with running up is held by other countries, not Americans. During and after WWII, the national debt hit what at that time would be considered a monumental national debt. The government, instead of looking to outside sources to pay it off, looked to the American people, selling US bonds. These bonds are essentially IOU slips from the American government, IOU slips that today are held by our enemies. The top two US debt holders today are 1) China, a totalitarian communist regime, and 2) the oil producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. These countries, because of this debt, hold power over our foreign policy, power that we cannot afford them to have.
There are two ways to combat this. Either cut government spending down, or raise taxes. There is no other way. Fiscal responsibility does not necessarily mean cutting taxes, fiscal responsibility means actually paying for what you promise. Fiscal responsibility means not promising what you cannot pay for. This is not a republican or democrat issue, in fact, most people associate the republicans with fiscal responsibility. In fact, republican president George W. Bush almost doubled our national debt in four years, while democratic president Bill Clinton presided over 3 out of the 4 budget surpluses in recent history. We need to vote for true fiscal responsibility, regardless of party affiliations, and stop this national debt from growing. At this current rate of growth, our government could collapse in the next 20-30 years. Now while I don't believe we will let it get to that point, I don't want to take that risk.
If you want to find out more information, there is a great documentary called IOUSA. I would suggest watching the whole thing, but the thirty minute version can be found here on YouTube.