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Title: Thomas Jefferson Warned Us
Source:
The American Spectator
URL Source: http://spectator.org/archives/2011/08/05/thomas-jefferson-warned-us
Published: Aug 5, 2011
Author: Andew Cline
Post Date: 2011-08-05 08:00:16 by Happy Quanzaa
Keywords: Thomas Jefferson, debt
Views: 5134
Comments: 12
"At some point, isn't it time to admit the system is broken?" So wrote Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein on Thursday. It was a phrase in widespread use for the past few weeks. The intro to CBS News' Face the Nation on Sunday asked, "As Americans watch a broken government, can Washington avoid economic catastrophe?" "Government is broken and it's not going to be repaired by next Tuesday," Bob Edgar, head of Common Cause, said last week. Something that is broken does not work as intended. It has been damaged by an outside force. The debt ceiling negotiations revealed many things, but never that the United States government is broken. On the contrary, the government worked exactly as designed. The party in control of the White House and the Senate disagreed with the party in control of the House. The disagreement was resolved through prolonged negotiations that resulted in a compromise that the president and a majority in Congress could and did accept. Disagreements in Washington have been worked out in precisely that way for centuries, just as the Founders anticipated. The U.S. government is not broken; it is dysfunctional. That is, it functions, but in an unhealthy way, a way that needs to be corrected. And that dysfunction was the direct cause of the debt-ceiling "crisis." Unlike most state governments, the federal government has no mechanism that prevents prolonged deficit spending. Congress and the president can spend more than the government takes in, forever, or at least until no one will lend to the government anymore. Thomas Jefferson recognized this flaw immediately. "No man is more ardently intent to see the public debt soon and sacredly paid off than I am," he wrote to President Washington in 1792. "This exactly marks the difference between Colonel Hamilton's views and mine, that I would wish the debt paid to-morrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing wherewith to corrupt and manage the Legislature." To Senator, and former House Speaker, Nathaniel Macon, Jefferson wrote in 1821, "There does not exist an engine so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad against whom this army and navy are to protect us." Jefferson thought a perpetual public debt was so injurious to liberty that he theorized a way of preventing one generation from passing a debt on to the next. In a letter to John Eppes in 1813, he wrote, "What is to hinder (the government) from creating a perpetual debt? The laws of nature, I answer." Each generation would be limited to accumulating only the debt that it could pay off before it died, he theorized. "Suppose that a majority, on the first day of the year 1794, had borrowed a sum of money equal to the fee-simple value of the State, and to have consumed it in eating, drinking and making merry in their day; or if you please, quarrelling and fighting with their unoffending neighbors." If that generation tried to pass that debt to the next generation, "Every one will say no," Jefferson wrote, "… the laws of nature impose no obligation on them to pay this debt. And although, like some other natural rights, this has not yet entered into any declaration of rights, it is no less a law, and ought to be acted on by honest governments." Jefferson's theory notwithstanding, this "law" has yet to be acknowledged by our government, much less written into the Constitution or our statutes. With no restraint on the accumulation of long-term debt, Jefferson's worst fears have been realized. Our politicians have figured out that they can benefit themselves by borrowing excessively and passing the bill to the next generation, which is exactly what they have done. The current debt is more than $14 trillion, or nearly $47,000 per U.S. citizen. Jefferson would be appalled. That "perpetual debt," as Jefferson called it -- not the recent "crisis" caused by taking the debt ceiling seriously -- is our government's real dysfunction, and what must be fixed if we are to reclaim the liberty that comes, as Jefferson knew, from being freed of the "torment" of perpetual indebtedness.
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#1. To: Happy Quanzaa (#0)
How did Jefferson "purchase" Louisiana?
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
With payment of $11,250,000 and the balance was assumption of debt owed us by the French (which was paid off by U.S. citizens of the time, not passed on). Jefferson wasn't against debt, he was against running it up and passing it on to the next generation. I wish I could borrow all I wanted to and pass it on to somebody born after I die.
Uh...no... $3MM gold down payment and f inanaced the rest with bonds issued through Barings Bank at a rate of 6%...
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
So what if the U.S. cash portion was financed? It was paid off, not passed on. If Jefferson had used Obamanomics we would still be paying just the interest and the bank would still be holding the title to the Louisiana Territory.
Mostly bonds, but the entire purchase was about 210 million dollars in TODAY's dollar value. It would have been a bargain at a thousand times that price. So if it was an exception to Jefferson's beliefs, it was a damn wise exception.
Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
When and how?
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
If Jefferson had used America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
I have no issue with how we purchased it and my admiration for Jefferson is second to none. That said, Jefferson was a very complex and, thus, very contradictory man. This simply illustrates, as was so often the case with him, that what Jefferson would "say" was often at odds with what Jefferson would "do".
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
And be still waiting for the trickledown.
Reagan's long bonds, along with the bonds used to bail out his S&L debacle, mature in 2019.
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
He also initiated the Barbary wars without the approval of Congress.
Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
Chyea...and negotiated with Islamic terrorists to end the war...
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
#2. To: war (#1)
#3. To: Happy Quanzaa (#2)
(Edited)
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
#4. To: war (#3)
#5. To: war (#1)
How did Jefferson "purchase" Louisiana?
#6. To: Happy Quanzaa (#4)
It was paid off, not passed on.
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
#7. To: Happy Quanzaa (#4)
If Jefferson had used Obamanomics we would still be paying just the interest
Obamanomics Reaganomics we would still be paying just the interest...
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
#8. To: no gnu taxes (#5)
(Edited)
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
#9. To: war (#7)
If Jefferson had used Obamanomics Reaganomics we would still be paying just the interest...
#10. To: mininggold (#9)
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
#11. To: war (#8)
#12. To: no gnu taxes (#11)
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
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