The American federal debt is a nonissue

Republican politicians are full of dire warnings--unrebutted propaganda in the corporate-censored right-wing media--that the federal deficit must be reduced and kept low--or else. They seldom go into any detail, since when the lie is repeated often enough it becomes a principle. But for anyone who cares about the truth of American economic destiny, it is worth asking why and questioning Republican dogmatism. Starting at the beginning, going to the end, and then stopping, we shall first look at history.

History shows that government spending can bring prosperity and sweep us out of the great recession, and that the resulting initial deficit would be shortly eliminated by the increased tax revenue of a burgeoning economy. Despite New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration, the Public Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration, which paid low wages and spent too cautiously, the Great Depression dragged on year after year, and was only terminated in 1940 and after by federal government procurements in preparation for war. The U.S. spent about $350 billion in fighting World War ll, whereas the yearly New Deal budget in peace had been merely $8 billion, yet the $247 billion debt existent in 1945 was quickly erased in the post-war revived economy, and thanks to defense spending's economic stimulus and sustained expenditure under Truman (the continuing G.I. Bill of Rights, enlargement of Social Security, the National Housing Act, and above all the Korean War), millions of Americans in the post-war boom entered the middle-class for the first time. Later, moreover, actuated by President Johnson 's Great Society, such as the war on poverty, and of course the Vietnam War, the U.S. and the world in the 1960s experienced the greatest economic boom in history.

The American federal government is basically the only institution in the world that can prime the pump and induce a thriving economy through spending-and it is not as though, with bankrupt state governments and dying cities, there is nothing worthy to spend on. At any rate, the federal debt is guaranteed by nothing less than the American people-a fact never mentioned by Republican anti-debt hystericals. Therefore, in my opinion, the nation should heed the Full Employment Act of 1946-which proclaimed the goal of federal spending (fiscal policy) to keep unemployment to a minimum-and dig itself out of the great recession such as corporate business time and again has proved incapable of and in such a way as history has shown to be the surest means-a self-compensating, wealth-engendering generous government expenditure.

John Fleming

Missouri, USA

John Fleming is the author of Word Power, which can be purchased through Amazon.com.