Help, please. Rep. John Tanner will be speaking at 4pm Wednesday on the topic of (so-called) fiscal responsibility. His presentation is open to the public, but I can’t get to Martin TN from Dallas TX by then; otherwise I’d be there.
Do you know anyone who will be attending Rep. Tanner’s presentation on Wednesday (Nov. 30) at the University of Tennessee at Martin, in the Watkins Auditorium of the Boling University Center? If so, I have a few questions that should be asked—assuming he plans to take questions after giving his doomsday-is-around-the-corner speech to our young college kids.
According to an article in the University’s newspaper, he thinks our current fiscal situation is a “generational mugging” and that today’s young people will eventually have to "pay off" the growing national debt. His Wednesday speech will be an opportunity for us to get a little more detail behind those rhetorical sound bites the Blue Dogs are so fond of.
Specifically, here are a few questions I wish somebody would ask:
• Mr. Tanner, you’re telling this audience of young people that they will eventually have to pay off the federal debt their parents are now running up. That means you think rolling the debt over and over in our growing economy, as our nation has been doing successfully for many generations, will cease to be an option for these young people. Would you please explain when you think debt rollover will become illegal or impossible?
• You and your Blue Dog colleagues keep talking alarmingly about the $8-trillion-and-growing debt level, but you never mention the $12-trillion-and-growing size of the economy (GDP). Why not?
• If you are alarmed at $8 trillion debt in a $12 trillion economy, what would you think of $80 trillion debt in a $120 trillion economy? In an economy like that, would these young kids you’re scaring today be better off or worse off? Why?
• Borrowing money for good investments is sound financial practice; ask any banker. People do it, companies do it, state and local governments do it, and the federal government does it. Thomas Jefferson did it to fund the Louisiana Purchase. FDR did it, and it arguably helped prevent an overthrow of the government. Ronald Reagan did it, and it arguably helped to prevent a thermonuclear war. Yet, you want borrowing to stop. With all due respect, Mr. Tanner, why should the federal government no longer be permitted to borrow money for good investments?
That's what I could come up with on short notice. I hope someone sees these questions before Wednesday and has a chance to ask Mr. Tanner one or more of them. Lastly: Live-blogging of his answers would be a dream come true for me.
