“This exactly marks the difference between Colo Hamilton’s views & mine, that I would wish the debt paid tomorrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing where with to corrupt & manage the legislature.” –Thomas Jefferson, Sept. 9, 1792
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The US National Debt has eclipsed $40 trillion. It’s tough to imagine that much money. Comparable references to this can be outrageous. It’s a like a stadium full of…, or it’s like the ocean something something. All aside, we have accumulated a potentially crippling amount of debt that could create economic disasters that would take generations to fix. $40 trillion in debt is an economic nightmare and a threat to our national security.
Alexander Hamilton envisioned a system of perpetual debt. He thought we could always borrow more money, and with our robust, diverse free-market economy, plenty of labor and resources, we would always pay back the debt, slowly and surely. It was a terrible idea.
Thomas Jefferson wanted “the debt paid tomorrow.” A creditor nation is a strong nation. A borrowing nation cannot be as strong as the place they borrowed from. Jefferson described Hamilton’s ideas as, “flowed from principles adverse to liberty & was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic.”
A few years prior to that critique of Hamilton, Jefferson had also said, “With respect to future debts; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years?”
A 19-year cap on borrowing is an interesting ceiling. Worth a try. Our federal government doesn’t really have a debt ceiling. We have a temporary number used for calculations. Whenever we approach exceeding that debt ceiling, we simply raise the ceiling, then insert a new number, recalculating, recalculating, and keep spending, spending, spending. No need to curb anything. And look at us now; $40 trillion in debt. What a ride.
Hamilton’s National Debt is unsustainable at this point. A Jeffersonian solution is, once again, the appropriate fix to one of Hamilton’s messes. Pay off the debt as soon as possible, please.