Rand Paul, Deficit Spending & The Threat to Fiscal Democracy

Rand Paul warns of "day of reckoning"

As US President Barack Obama continues to rack up the largest deficit in US history, the situation in the November 2 mid-term elections is crystal clear:

Even one more Senate seat for the Democrats will further empower Obama's fiscally destructive politics. One more for the Republicans -- coupled with gains in the House of Representatives -- will be able to stem the tide.

Few seem to understand this better than Republican Rand Paul, whose running to become the new junior Senator from Kentucky.

"We have a different vision than the president," Paul announced. "There's nothing inherently wrong with him, it's that his vision is wrong."

"His vision is that we're going to get out of this recession with more spending, more deficits," he continued. "But that money just doesn't magically appear."

"People come to me and they say, 'Oh, you're going to vote against this program,'" Paul said. "I say, 'How are you going to pay for it? Are you going to simply stick your head in the sand and keep borrowing, or are you going to print it up from the Federal Reserve and dilute the value of the dollars that exist?'"

"We can't live that way," Paul concluded. "There is a day of reckoning coming."

That looming day of reckoning should be quite familar to Canadians. As recently as 15 years ago, economists and financiers were musing about the possibility of Canada defaulting on its foreign debts.

In his book Hands-On Democracy, Patrick Boyer (then a candidate to succeed Brian Mulroney as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party) laid out the case for getting a handle on Canada's public finances.

In the book, Boyer noted the extent to which public debt is a threat to democracy. As default looms, and international crediters begin to demand concessions from a threat-belleaguered state, the number of options available to elected officials narrows.

In the United States, potentially facing a similar crisis, Rand Paul is the one sounding this alarm.

His Democratic opponent, Jack Conway, seems to have little to offer aside from complaining about what events Paul doesn't show up to, and vague suggestions that Paul doesn't share "Kentucky's values".

Simply put, there's a reason Conway continues to trail Paul in the polls.

It's because Rand Paul and his party have clearly recognized the fiscal danger of allowing President Obama to continue uninhibited. And while the Republican Party clearly played a roll in making the sorry fiscal state of the United States what it is, they are at least the party that is acknowledging the extent of the crisis.

That's why Rand Paul is poised to defeat Jack Conway on November 2.