40 years ago, before I got into the hotel business, our church had a guess speaker named Bob Dollar come deliver the sermon one Sunday. He made such an impression on me. The Days Inn hotel chain was started in 1970 by a guy named Cecil Day and Bob Dollar was hired in the early 70’s to head the development team for Days Inn.

One thing he said (and acted it out) I will never forget. He said, “if your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.”  As he said it, he did the following hand motions. He pushed his hand straight out and said, “if your outgo” pulled his hand back “exceeds your income” pushed his hand up “then your upkeep” lowered his hand “will be your downfall.” That little visual has been fixed in my mind for all these years. I know this because it was so true during my restaurant years.  

We as Americans do not have the ability to live beyond our income. Including debt, we must spend less than we bring in. If you find yourself borrowing on credit cards to live, its only a matter of time before the chickens come home to roost. In that case your upkeep will be your downfall.

Except for some complicated measures, each state must (generally) balance their budget yearly because they have no means to just create new money, unlike our Federal Government. The last time the Federal Government had a balanced budget with a surplus was in 2001 under Bill Clinton. Since then, the US has gone deeper in debt each month and each year. Today, the federal deficit is 220 billion dollars a month. That is each month.  12 months/ one year equals a deficit of 2.6 trillion dollars. Our national debt today is 30 trillion and growing by 2.6 trillion a year. It doesn’t take a math genius to understand this cannot last.  Annual GDP (gross domestic product – monetary value of all goods and services made in or sold from the United States) equals only 22 trillion. On that 22 trillion, the federal tax revenue (from all of us) is only 4.8 trillion and the government is still losing 220 billion a month. You can see what the problem is.

My point? Let’s elect people who understand money that hopefully come from a business background where they understand what it means to hire people and meet a weekly payroll. We have so many elected officials that have never been through a downturn and many that have never held a job other than a government position. They simply don’t know what it is actually like to depend only on themselves to go out and earn a living. Let’s elect the right kind of people. KT