Debt: Taxation Without Representation

As you probably know, the federal debt is now over $16 trillion. Members of both political parties (elected by us) have added to this staggering total for decades. The debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency and Obama has managed to rack up more debt than that in just one term. As you may have heard, we reelected him.

Technically it's Congress that wields more power over the federal government's purse strings than the president. Despite record low approval ratings of these big spenders, we just sent 91% of the incumbents back to Congress. Don't look for a sudden change to frugality there.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the federal debt will be $25 trillion by 2021. Unfortunately, CBO projections historically have been about 40% low 80% of the time.

Of course none of these figures include the unfunded liabilities that we are going to have shell out for Social Security and Medicare. These currently stand at about $121 trillion. Any way you slice it there is a mountain of debt coming down.

Children who didn't get to vote for or against the crooks running up this debt will one day labor to repay it. Perennial Iowa Libertarian candidate Dr. Eric Cooper has called this “taxation without representation in its purest form.” It is hard to argue otherwise.

"No taxation without representation" was the rallying cry that lead the American colonists to rebel against the British Empire. Someday, when we hand a future generation of Americans the bill for tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of taxation without representation, they will be just as morally justified to do to us what the founding generation did to the redcoats.