Debt Iceberg

"Do you have the slightest comprehension of what you're getting into?"
--Molly Brown (Titanic)

The Constitution of the United States was the first complete framework for government that grounded in natural law. But it was not perfect, has these pages have discussed on several occasions (e.g., here).

Nice piece here discussing problems with the enumerated power in Article 1, Section 8 that permitted Congress "To borrow Money on the credit of the United States." The author notes that anti-federalists such as Brutus foresaw problems with this clause with prescient accuracy.

The author suggests that borrowing is politically attractive because it bypasses the unpopular need to tax citizens to pay for government programs--whether they be for warfare or welfare. But borrowing merely pushes taxation further out into the future. Indeed, people looking for evidence of short time horizons of politicians need look no further than political propensity to borrow--near term gratification that creates long term problems.

The political borrowing habit is so great that young and future generations have been sentenced to toil as debt slaves.

The author doubts that even amending the Constitution to eliminate congressional borrowing power would eliminate our debt addiction. Instead, he suspects that the good ship U.S.S. United States has a date with a looming debt iceberg.