Take Janet Yellen’s warning seriously — The spending needs to stop now

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet Yellen expressed her concerns about our increasing national debt, particularly remarking on the growth of federal spending in entitlement programs in the coming years.

“It shows a picture in which, as our population ages, expenditures on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security grow more rapidly than tax revenues, and the debt-to-GDP ratio moves up,” Yellen said. “This should be a very significant concern.”

{mosads}The national debt is indeed concerning as we have well surpassed $20 trillion. Our debt is continuing to grow due largely in part to federal spending in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and our overwhelming military budget. In other words, the government is in over its head when it comes to spending and there appears to be no end in sight.

In 2016, the federal government spent 24 percent of the budget on Social Security — $916 billion — and 26 percent on Medicare and Medicaid — $1 trillion. Our military spending constitutes 33 percent of our GDP and when the Department of Defense tried to cut that spending by $2 billion per year, lawmakers insisted that it would hurt local economies and further propel us into debt. A few months ago, during the great budget battle of 2017, lawmakers refused to acknowledge the need to cut spending on entitlement programs. That conversation is still continuing as lawmakers go head to head over the GOP Tax bill that could cut over $25 billion in Medicare costs.

But some lawmakers do not want to see these cuts happen because then they would not be able to please their lobbyists. Not only has government overreach gotten too big, but those that are running the government are driven by their own private interests including pleasing those that are padding their pockets to vote a certain way.  

As a result, we are left with lawmakers that refuse to put the interests of the American public before their own, and turning a blind eye to the spending that should indeed keep us up at night. We are plummeting faster into fathomless levels of debt than we can keep track of and it begs the questions, why can’t we stop fueling entitlement programs and the defense budget? Is it really that crazy to think that we can’t freeze spending or even better, bring government spending levels down to where they were in 2010?

The burden of this ever increasing debt is crippling the economy and will continue to do so until we limit not only government spending, but the role of government overall. The American people need to have a serious conversation about the role of the federal government. For example, health care can be satisfactorily provided by private companies within the free market. That process has already begun with organizations like Direct Primary Care, in which doctors are bypassing the red tape and asking for direct payment for their services.  

Yellen is correct in worrying about the rise in national debt and federal spending. We are spending too much on entitlement programs and the military and it is going to affect the country for decades to comes.

We need a revolution in this country where Americans everywhere rise up and say enough is enough, cut the spending.

Cliff Maloney, Jr., is the president of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), a non-profit, youth organization based in Arlington, Va., that boasts over 900 college chapters across the United States. YAL’s mission is to identify, educate, train, and mobilize youth activists committed to winning on principle.