Georgia U.S. Senate Candidate Buckley says The United States Suffers From Financial Cancer, But Few Care

    ATLANTA, GA, September 02, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Allen Buckley, a fiscal conservative independent candidate in the special election race for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Kelly Loeffler, says the United States suffers from financial cancer, but few care.

The national debt is closing in on $27 trillion. It is a major problem because in 2007, when total debt was less than $9 trillion, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said: "GAO's current long-term simulations continue to show ever larger deficits resulting in a federal debt burden that ultimately spirals out of control." Annual revenue has never exceeded $3.5 trillion, and the budget has not been balanced since 2001. In 2011, when total federal debt was approximately $15 trillion, Admiral Mike Mullen, then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the national debt the nation's greatest national security threat. On his campaign website, Buckley explains the impacts of the national debt.

In an Issue Brief dated April 29, 2020, Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute anticipated a $4.2 trillion deficit for 2020, a $2.2 trillion deficit for 2021, and deficits ranging from $1.3 trillion to $2.6 trillion over the remainder of the decade. He stated that inflation-adjusted federal spending per household would increase to $43,817 by 2030, up from $29,562 in 2006. He also noted he expects the public debt-to-GDP ratio to surpass the all-time high percent of 106 (reached in 1946) in the next year, with the ratio hitting 128 percent in 2030. He warns of a potential debt crisis due to rising debt and interest costs.

For years, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have called the federal government's financial situation "unsustainable." On June 1, 2020, the CBO reported that it will take the better part of a decade (i.e. 10 years) for the U.S. economy to recover from COVID-19.

Former Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Gene Steuerle said in his 2014 book Dead Men Ruling: "Nations that face exploding debt levels or the kind of problems outlined above [relating to the United States' financial problems] often refuse to pay their debts and declare bankruptcy. Because so many nations depend on the U.S. dollar to stabilize world markets, a U.S. default could prompt not just a U.S. crisis, but a global depression."

A March 7-8, 2020 Wall Street Journal article titled "Global Outbreaks Are Likely to Continue" includes the following quote from Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit research group that built a database tracking disease events locally: "I'm not holding in my bunker right now. We're going to get hit by a much bigger one sometime in the next 10 years."

Buckley said: "The U.S. suffers from financial cancer, but few care. Assuming the powers that be in D.C. don't know about an unavoidable end-of-the-world scenario, what is now taking place is pure unpatriotic, irresponsible, short-sighted, selfish financial sanity. After World War II, there were two lengthy real growth periods that exceeded 5 percent; that's not realistic for the U.S. with its mature economy. Other than significant real growth, significant inflation and high taxes on the wealthy were what then helped the U.S. get its financial house in order. The Fed has taken to Quantitative Easing (i.e. money printing) in a major way, and recently said it plans to do little if inflation becomes relatively significant. With all the growing government debt and private sector debt worldwide, if Daszak turns out to be right, the debt crisis that Riedl and Steuerle mentioned and that the GAO and CBO have warned of could hit, potentially resulting in a stock market collapse and a worldwide depression that the federal government will be powerless to do anything about. Historically, collapsing democracies and republics have often been followed by dictatorships. I offer solutions to these problems. They require reasonable sacrifice."

Buckley's "Save Tomorrow" campaign is about living for today and tomorrow, instead of living for today to the detriment of tomorrow. The focus is on doing things to make tomorrow as good as or even better than today, by acting now to address the nation's financial challenges and confronting global warming in a practical way. Mr. Buckley is an attorney/CPA. He can be reached for comment at (404) 610-1936. Mr. Buckley's campaign website is www.buckleyforsenate.org.

# # #