Finally Time for Fiscal Conservatism?
I'm not obsessed by politics. Some people can't seem to think about much else. My personal belief is that our politicians (at least in our context) don't have as much wiggle room as we think. They make big promises, and we bite. Truth is, certain realities make major policy shifts difficult if not impossible. Think Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman can come straight in and fix California's economy? Think again! I'd prefer just to pray for the leaders we have rather than fixate on what they should or shouldn't do.
I do know that our national leaders have a noticeable effect in at least two areas. First, they affect foreign policy. The decisions made in the White House clearly leave an impact on relations between the US and other countries. Even in this area, however, certain realities are scripted from elsewhere and can't be changed no matter who is in the White House.
A second area affected by national leaders is monetary policy. They clearly don't control every dollar that's spent since some expenses are mandated by past decisions. Still, they control the trajectory of our spending. Our leader in the White House either opens the purse strings or keeps a tight rein on them.
Frankly, it's hard not to be concerned with our national debt. Isn't it something like $12 trillion? That's unbelievable. I know that some of our national leaders felt that we had to prevent another Great Depression by going into deeper debt to create more spending. But our national debt is so staggering. We've built an economy dependent more on spending than on production. And we've financed that spending with easy money from elsewhere. Scripture says, "The borrower is slave to the lender" (Prov 22:7).
Interestingly, Germany chose a different path out of this global recession. It followed a path of fiscal austerity instead of the US model of deficit spending. The result? Germany recently announced a quarter of unbelievable growth. (Click here for a recent NY Times article about the German economy.) We can't know yet if that growth is sustainable, but it should give our national leaders pause to hopefully realize that our deficit spending & focus on consumption as a way of life have not fixed and cannot fix our economic woes.
I do know that our national leaders have a noticeable effect in at least two areas. First, they affect foreign policy. The decisions made in the White House clearly leave an impact on relations between the US and other countries. Even in this area, however, certain realities are scripted from elsewhere and can't be changed no matter who is in the White House.
A second area affected by national leaders is monetary policy. They clearly don't control every dollar that's spent since some expenses are mandated by past decisions. Still, they control the trajectory of our spending. Our leader in the White House either opens the purse strings or keeps a tight rein on them.
Frankly, it's hard not to be concerned with our national debt. Isn't it something like $12 trillion? That's unbelievable. I know that some of our national leaders felt that we had to prevent another Great Depression by going into deeper debt to create more spending. But our national debt is so staggering. We've built an economy dependent more on spending than on production. And we've financed that spending with easy money from elsewhere. Scripture says, "The borrower is slave to the lender" (Prov 22:7).
Interestingly, Germany chose a different path out of this global recession. It followed a path of fiscal austerity instead of the US model of deficit spending. The result? Germany recently announced a quarter of unbelievable growth. (Click here for a recent NY Times article about the German economy.) We can't know yet if that growth is sustainable, but it should give our national leaders pause to hopefully realize that our deficit spending & focus on consumption as a way of life have not fixed and cannot fix our economic woes.
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