Okay, so…what happens when average Joe the Plumber – the sort of American Obama wanted to help – defaults on a loan? If the loan was for a house, then the bank takes the house. If the loan was on a car, then the bank takes the car. If it was a credit card or other loan, sometimes liens are put on a house, or wages are garnished so that the money is paid back. No matter what Joe the Plumber’s position in life is, there are consequences when he does not pay back the money that is owed. But when the government runs into trouble, they vote on whether to raise the debt ceiling.
I’m sitting here, editing a pile of articles, and preparing a menu for 95 local homeless people for tomorrow night, and in the background, I just heard the press conference with President Obama. What happens if the nation doesn’t figure out its debt problem? Joe the Plumber, Jill the Carpenter, and everyone else in the nation suffers. Here’s a list of who will not be paid and what may be in jeopardy :
- The military – you know, all those folks who put their lives on the line to protect our nation from real and imaginary threats
- The police departments, the fire departments, public hospitals
- The elderly who depend on social security to buy food and have homes
- The disabled who depend upon disability payments
- Any government employee
- Public universities
- Students depending upon federal money to attend university or even jr. colleges
- NSA
- All governmental agencies
- Treasury notes
- Tax credits
- Believe it or not, oil and gasoline would go short
- Military contractors
- Medicare
- Medicaid (Meaning that doctors will not get paid)
Evidently, 70 million checks are signed by the U.S. Government every month. This is more than just a “disagreement.”
The stubborn nature of all those involved in this – members of both parties – with a total lack of thinking about what the fallout from default will cause in our already struggling nation upsets me. Something absolutely needs to be done. If Joe the Plumber defaulted, there would be consequences. When the government defaults, what do you do? We can’t go and repossess cars or the white house. The only thing we can do is withhold our votes, but that won’t matter much either when you don’t have gas for your car because you didn’t get your Social Security payment this month. I really don’t know what to do about it. It’s one of those situations where I feel totally small in comparison to the problem. All over the internet, people are sounding the alarm that this is really serious bad stuff. The list above doesn’t even scratch the surface of the fallout. With fewer people with money, the landlords, the service providers, the businesses that depend upon customers and clients may start to shut down. This is bad, bad, bad news.
The only two things I can suggest to you are to first hold out hope that a compromise is reached and that we don’t have to find out what happens if a country defaults on its loans, and second, to make a move back to the community – the local community. Your social networking friends are great, but make sure you have connections in your own community as well. Introduce yourself to neighbors, your local grocer, the local farmer. Put a personal face to yourself in an anonymous world.
That’s about where I’m at in my thinking on the matter.
I like to be an optimist, and I like to believe that things will work out – and that many of those blogging on these issues and the news media is just doing what it always does – running around like Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling.
