I have been listening to the news recently. They keep talking about the economy and how we are now in a depression. Why is this happening? I understand people don’t want us to increase the deficit but what happened to the deficit when they gave tax breaks to the rich? I understand their reasoning. They thought the companies would use that money to create more jobs. That did not happen. Most companies used money to buy back their own stock or give money to their shareholders. The funny thing about people who own stock is that 85% of stock is owned by the rich. So the tax break did not help the middle class. In fact, in some cases it actually hurt them. But where was the outcry over this causing the deficit to rise?

Right now we are in the middle of something that has not happened since 1918. We have a pandemic that is making millions of people sick and killing hundreds of thousands of them. The White House and the Congress are too interested in trying to make points than they are in helping us. When this pandemic first started, they should have put something in place to make everyone whole financially. This means increasing the debt by giving direct payment to people. I hear it all the time that people don’t want to work because they are making more on unemployment than if they were working. That might be true in some cases, but people who are collecting unemployment are doing so because they don’t have a job and can’t find one. There are more people applying for unemployment right now than applied during the Great Depression.

This means people don’t have money for food, rent and everyday living expenses. There are more people going to free food lines than ever before. They are not doing this so they can get extra food that you or I might not have, but they are getting this food so their families can go to bed and not be hungry. There are more than 54.3 million people, including 18 million children, who may experience food insecurity in 2020. This is a direct result of the pandemic.

Government needs to do something about this before it gets worse. I am happy if you don’t have food worries but think of your neighbors who might. Call your representatives, no matter if they are Republican or Democrat — they need to work together or pretty soon you might be without a job.

If most people don’t have money they can’t spend it. This is hurting the deficit in the long haul.

Finally, I should speak about the deficit. If this country had made everyone whole from day one, our economy would be near what it was just before the pandemic, but it would have increased the deficit. We did not do this and the longer we go before most people are made whole again and our economy returns to normal, the higher the deficit will go. In the end, no matter what we do, the deficit will increase.

What we are doing now will be the greatest driver of the deficit. In either case raising the deficit is the ONLY answer. Which direction we take will determine how much we increase it.