It seems to me, after listening to many political debates, we have a serious problem in this country. I’m not an economist, nor do I pretend to know a lot about the way our country prepares the fiscal budget. However, I do look at the U.S. debt clock every so often. As of this week, our national debt was over $22.5 trillion and climbing over $100,000 every few seconds. This amount increases at that rate 24/7. Yet, I hear little if anything about this being a serious problem in any of the debates.
If I divide the dollar amount of the national debt by each citizen in the United States the amount owed per citizen would be over $60,000. If I divide the debt by each taxpayer the amount would be over $180,000 per taxpayer. This to me is unconscionable.
It may be that we could curb some of our spending if we practiced effective zero- based budgeting. That is, instead of adding onto the budget each fiscal period, or whenever politicians feel the urge, we would account for and justify every line item in the budget each fiscal period. This would identify and eliminate enormous amounts of waste.
I don’t believe many politicians favor zero-based budgeting because it would eliminate billions of dollars that they can move around and spend on pet projects to help them get re-elected. Maybe we should start talking about real issues in these political debates instead of how their facial gestures appear on camera.
DAVID BLAKE
Contoocook