How My Trip to Kohl's Could Save the U.S. $50 Billion

I had one of those moments when I was driving to Kohl's today to get some pants. But before that, I want you to know that I had to go to Kohl's to get pants because at American Amalgamated Corrugated Conglomerates of America, some important people are coming in tomorrow and we're required to wear long-sleeve shirts, dress pants, and a tie. Women are required to wear a dress and hose or a Hillary Clinton's favorite - a pants-suit. I know this is going to present some problems. Imagine the liability if I get my tie stuck in the corrugator. Or the conglomerator, for that matter. Bad news!

So anyway, most of my pants are casual. And they're getting old. I have some dress pants, but since my daughter was diagnosed with leukemia and people started bringing us meals, I've packed on the pounds. I think I'm probably 15 pounds heavier than I was in September. So I don't have any pants to wear that actually fit my fah-tass. So in my small way I spurred some economic activity - especially in Columbia, South America where the pants were made. By the way, I had a 30% discount coupon. O'Malley - I paid less sales tax because of that coupon. Ha-Ha!!

Back to my point. While driving to Kohl's I was listening to Obama give his economic speech today where he talked about how awesome he is. I knew he was giving this speech today and many naysayers were saying nay. I mean they were saying that they expected Obama to announce a plan for massive tax increases on the wealthy (translate this to mean anyone who has a job). These massive tax increases would be needed to reduce our deficit and to provide social programs for people that just don't want to work, God bless them (thank you, Ned Flanders).

Obama then mentioned that people want him to stop foreign aid altogether. He pointed out, however, that foreign aid is only 1% of the federal budget, so therefore it's not a problem. I got to wondering, what is the federal budget? One percent could be a lot of money. Then I thought, since we spend more than we receive in tax revenue, we have to borrow money from communist China to make up the difference. We then pay interest on the money that communist China lends to us. So basically we are borrowing money at interest to give it away to Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, etc... Aren't there some fast-talkers in D.C. that could convince China to give this money directly to the recipients and cut us out as the middleman? Imagine how much money we would save in interest payments!

Last year the United States gave away $50 Billion in 'will you be my friend' money. I know my fraternity brothers didn't spend nearly that amount and we had plenty of friends. In the grand scheme of things, $50 billion is a relatively small portion of the money that the Federal government spends, but over time a few billion here, a few billion there, we could really start saving some real money.

Here are the federal debt numbers. The 2010 federal budget was $3.552 TRILLION. That is how much money the United States spent. In 2010, the government considered it had $2.831 TRILLION in revenue. That means we had a deficit of $1.171 TRILLION. Therefore we had to borrow $1.171 TRILLION to cover the expenses that we could not cover with tax revenue. If my math is correct, then thirty-three percent (33%) of all the money the Federal government spends is borrowed money. Do you have a problem with this? I think I do.

Moreover, our Federal Debt - the amount of money we currently owe people (mostly the commies in China), is $14 TRILLION. Congress, mostly liberal Democrats, are demanding that we increase the Federal debt ceiling so that we can borrow more money (from communist China). Think of this - if the United States just paid the principal on the money it owes, it would take 7 years based on current revenues to pay it off if 100% of the collected revenue was applied to the debt. This is insane. And it doesn't take into consideration the interest.

Who knew that driving to Kohl's could spur such economic thought?