{"id":7109,"date":"2012-10-09T06:06:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T11:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seanthorenson.wordpress.com\/?p=7109"},"modified":"2014-08-07T10:23:28","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T15:23:28","slug":"save-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/save-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Save America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7110\" title=\"SaveAmerica\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/saveamerica.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"730\" height=\"656\" \/><strong>Is anyone else disturbed and embarrassed by our national debt? <\/strong>America&#8217;s way of doing business is expensive. The current national debt is a staggering\u00a0<strong> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.brillig.com\/debt_clock\/debtiv.gif\" alt=\"$ 1 6 , 1 7 8 , 3 1 4 , 5 3 1 , 7 5 3 . 2 4 \" width=\"421\" height=\"41\" \/><\/strong>. It&#8217;s hard to quantify such a number. I think it would be accurate to describe it as irresponsible and disheartening. It didn&#8217;t happen overnight. It wasn&#8217;t run-up by one administration, <em>or<\/em> one party. If America truly is a democratic republic, then we all have a part in this number. If the government works for us, we have a responsibility \u2013 an obligation \u2013 to see this number go down. But how?<\/p>\n<p>I certainly don&#8217;t know the answers, but I do know what our household does when we forecast a shortfall in our budget. I don&#8217;t demand more money from my employer or go out looking for a higher-paying job. We reduce spending. We look seriously at what is a &#8216;want&#8217; and what is a &#8216;need&#8217;. We make do. We scrimp. We pinch. We save. We survive. It&#8217;s simple math. Spend less than you make. Live within your means.<\/p>\n<p>At some point we as a country stopped making fiscal responsibility a priority. We treat debt as a way of life \u2013 a necessity to live the &#8216;American Dream&#8217;. It isn&#8217;t. True, the politicians all know how to pay lip-service as to how they plan to lower that number, but it will take each one of us to adopt financial accountability as a priority in our own lives. Isn&#8217;t it hypocritical to expect the government to be debt-free if we&#8217;re not? I think if we want to save America, we need to <em>save<\/em>, America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is anyone else disturbed and embarrassed by our national debt? America&#8217;s way of doing business is expensive. The current national debt is a staggering\u00a0 . It&#8217;s hard to quantify such a number. I think it would be accurate to describe it as irresponsible and disheartening. It didn&#8217;t happen overnight. It wasn&#8217;t run-up by one administration, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2,9,11,24,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-debt-free","category-finances","category-observations","category-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3XRuE-1QF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7482,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7109\/revisions\/7482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}