Financial house of cards a big threat
Instead of some the irrelevant questions that will be asked of the presidential candidates in the fall debates, one I would love to hear asked is this: Can the U.S. afford to maintain its present military presence in the world?
The national debt is now $9.4 trillion and rising at over a billion dollars per day, jobs are being lost, and Social Security and Medicare will soon be bankrupt. So how much longer can the U.S. maintain more than 800 bases in 39 countries?
Some of the larger troop assignments are: 58,000 in Germany, 33,000 in Japan, 27,000 in S. Korea, 20,000 in the United Kingdom and Italy, about 200,000 in Iraq, and 25,000 in Afghanistan.
Without a Soviet Union, is it really necessary for our defense to keep 58,000 troops in Germany and 20,000 in the U.K. and Italy?
We are borrowing money from these countries to pay the cost of maintaining troops and bases in their country. Sounds crazy to me.
It is estimated that about 25 percent to 40 percent of our national debt is held by foreign countries and that half of the cost of the war in Iraq is being borrowed from foreign countries.
The three countries holding a large part of our national debt are Japan at $580 billion, China at $390 billion and the U.K. at $380 billion. There is a new estimate that says the cost of the war in Iraq will rise to $12 billion a month and this is with the surge working and al Qaida being driven out of the country. Remember when the Bush administration said that most of the cost of the war would be paid for with Iraqi oil?
What will happen to our financial house of cards when the Social Security and Medicare surpluses end and the national debt begins rising at an even faster rate than today? As late as 1980, when President Reagan took office, the national debt was less than one trillion dollars. So in less than 30 years, the national debt has risen over $8 trillion.
The rate the national debt is rising is not sustainable and disaster looms unless the politicians begin practicing what they are always preaching -- smaller government and greater fiscal responsibility.
Will it happen? I doubt it.
Victor Darst
West Dundee