No skin in the game

I never went to business school. I was a glorified English major in college. But I feel I’ve earned a PhD in economics running this small business for the past 35 years.

My business experience has convinced me that I could do a better job in Congress than anyone we have there now from Iowa. If I was 20 years younger I might even run for Congress to help these nitwits read an income statement and balance sheet. But DC doesn’t need another 75-year-old fossil.

We are saddled with 435 clueless Representatives and 100 Senators, most of whom apparently don’t know the first thing about handling money. Maybe that’s because most of them have never run a business. They are professional politicians who never had to make a payroll or pledge their own homes to guarantee a loan. They have no skin in the game.

None of Iowa’s six members of Congress own a business, which may explain why they make such stupid decisions. Chuck Grassley says he’s a farmer, but that’s just a side hustle to his more lucrative career as a senator. He’s been a professional politician since 1959. Why else would he hang around the Capitol into his mid-90s? Members of Congress make $174,000 per year, plus expenses — working just three days a week, 35 weeks a year — which explains why so many of them become millionaires while in office.

The recent passage of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is testament to Congressional incompetence. These folks are unable or unwilling to understand that this bill will thrust our nation headlong into financial calamity. We will rack up unsustainable deficits fueled by tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the working class. But these same middle and lower class citizens, who do most of the work in the nation yet make the least money, will at the same time be denied the services and healthcare necessary for them to maintain a decent quality of life. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk continue to amass greater fortunes than any person could possibly spend.

The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is projected to add $4 trillion to a deficit that has grown from $5 trillion when Bill Clinton was president 25 years ago to $36 trillion today The interest on this debt is $1 trillion a year and growing.

Republicans have promoted themselves as the party of responsible spending, but that has gone out the window since Clinton. The GOP has actually run up bigger deficits over the last 20 years than the Democrats. Clinton was the last president to offer a balanced budget, and during his presidency the national debt was actually paid down. To reduce the growing deficit, in 1993 Clinton pushed through a Republican Congress a tax increase on the highest incomes while reducing the federal workforce by 400,000 people. His vice president, Al Gore, oversaw the workforce reductions through careful analysis that preserved services while trimming payroll.

But wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the financial calamity of 2008 that nearly caused another Great Depression, exploded the deficits again. Covid recovery five years ago added to the debt. But there’s no reason to run a deficit today. We are not officially engaged in a war and the economy is in good shape — at least until these crazy tariffs kicked in. So the Republicans have decided to play Russian roulette with our economy.

We understand debt at the Times Pilot. We’ve borrowed money for 30 years to build our Times Square office, buy a printing press, operate delivery vehicles and purchase the Pilot-Tribune. Debt has a way of focusing one’s attention.

We’re not alone. Any small business faces the same challenges. Retailers have to ask banks for money to stock their shelves. Car dealers have “floor plans” — loans to finance the inventory on their lots. Farmers have to finance seed and fertilizer. Even big corporations borrow money for factory expansions. But they all have a plan to pay the loans back. The U.S. government doesn’t. It just keeps adding to the debt.

And our Congress goes right along with the gag, with Republicans afraid to tell Donald Trump that his economic plan is crazy. His MAGA followers think he’s a genius. But he’s not. He’s gone bankrupt six times and has been assessed more than $600 million in civil and criminal penalties. The only reason he’s rich is because he inherited $400 million from his father. His tariffs are forcing prices up for American consumers and causing local businesses to close, including a Storm Lake retailer.

When the U.S. government borrows so much money, it forces interest rates up for the rest of us when we want to buy a house, a car or a printing press. Uncle Sam sucks so much money out of the loan market that it reduces the cash available to the rest of us.

The entire federal budget this year is $6.8 trillion, including Social Security, which is a self-funded trust. If Social Security wasn’t included in the budget, our financial situation would look even worse. If we have to pay 5% interest on a $40 trillion debt, that’s $2 trillion — or nearly a third of our total budget — that will go just to interest payments. Any business that spends a third of its budget on interest will have a serious and most uncomfortable conversation with its banker. Your lender will shut you down while taking your house, your car and your first-born child.

Congress doesn’t understand this. We need to elect representatives who really understand budgets and will represent all of the people, not just one orange-faced windbag who is out of touch with reality.