Drop The Debt!

While many of us here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. are worried about genuine problems, such as having to deal with the BCS in college football, or what happened to that one really good flavor of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that hasn’t been at Albertson’s the last three times I’ve been there, our fat cat legislators in Washington want to deal with stupid problems that have no bearing on me such as dealing with the national debt.  With all the talk about raising the debt ceiling, why don’t we just eliminate the national debt instead?

Huston is a bit more politically informed than myself, but I have to tell you, the national debt is probably the easiest thing we can solve.  It’s money, and we have to pay it back.  Simple, right?  Understand this, when our founding  fathers donned their heroic knickers and wigs to sign that Constitution of ours, there was something they wrote into it that even the strict constructionists cannot deny…

The American way, baby!  So let’s get crackin’, American-80’s-action-movie-style!  First, I felt it was important to get a handle on what the national debt was.  A quick google search proved most helpful, and also helped me to not have to read a lot.  So, to check out what we’re working with here, please check out this helpful infographic: http://www.usdebtclock.org/.

Now that we know what we are working with here, let’s get to the nitty gritty…

1)  Get a sponsorship deal for our country – Can you believe this has never been seriously discussed before?  Imagine it, “The United States of America, Presented by Kellogg’s”, or “The Kotex United States of America, providing the confidence YOU need since 1776!”.  The beauty of it is, we could do so much more than just acquire a sponsorship of our country.  One invented word, my friends: Micro-sponsorships!  Can’t you just imagine driving through “The Tostitos Yellowstone National Park Experience” on your way to “Old Faithful, proudly sponsored by Viagra”?
2)  Stage a celebrity benefit – If broadcast television has taught me one thing, it’s that if there’s a problem to be solved, the social vanguard are guys with names like T-Pain, Jay Z, and Brangelina.  Celebrity benefits offer the same money making opportunities as commercials for charities without having to be bummed out by pictures of big eyed kids or animals that have been abused.  Rocking out to a sweet collaboration between Jay Z and Bono and then buying the song on iTunes with 2 percent of the profit going towards the national debt sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me!
3)  Empty the couch cushions – There is untold wealth in our collective couch cushions that we are using to purchase Starbucks and candy bars, and this needs to end!  My fellow Americans, if we just all banded together for a week and used that Snickers money to chip in towards the debt, we’d be able to get it paid off at least a couple of days earlier.
4)  Bring in a consultant – Another no brainer.  People on tv and the internet are really smart.  You can tell they are, because they are on tv, and you aren’t.  Sometimes they get sweaty, raise their voices, and use dramatic inflections.  Fortunately, I happen to know a consultant that will work in the low six figures.  You can find him as a guest blogger at gentlyhewstone.wordpress.com.
5)  Stop spending so !@#$ing much! – Okay, some things are just too crazy to consider.  Moving on…
6)  Sweet talk Chinese president Hu Jintao into letting it slide – gotta admit, this one came straight from Bart Simpson from an episode of The Simpsons where Future Bart had to help Future President Lisa acquire debt forgiveness from the future U.S.’s debtors.  Basically, the U.S. is kind of like that mega hot girl in high school that everyone hates but wants to be friends with at the same time.  Like Bart once did, all we have to do is get our country to bat our collective eyelashes at China and say “China, you’re cool…right China?  You’re not really going to make us pay all that money back, right?”  Now, I’m not condoning the US sleeping with China, but maybe if we just flash them a little leg (Florida) or heck, maybe we could even give them one of the Carolinas.  That would probably be enough to at least get us through another couple of decades of not having to pay them back the quadrillions we owe them.
7) Start a lemonade stand – Your fathers, your fathers’ fathers, and your fathers’ fathers’ fathers picked themselves up by the boot straps (even though I have no idea what a boot strap is and I’m too lazy to google it) and eked out a hardscrabble existence on the mean streets of Gary, Indiana.  You know how they laid the foundation for your future?  You guessed it, armed robbery.  Now, after they did a dime in upstate Indiana and made parole but were unable to acquire gainful employment because of their checkered past, they started a lemonade stand.  It was good enough to put you through a half year at State before you dropped out, but that is where you learned an important lesson…

Stop borrowing money from Hu Jintao.

So there you have it, common sense solutions to reduce and eventually eradicate the national debt.  Of course, for more details, you’ll have to catch my upcoming show on CNN, “The HENDReport”, where I tackle tough issues in a no nonsense, take no prisoners, confrontational style.  Oh, and I’ll have a six figure salary.
Steve Hendricks blogs at  “Mormonocalypse”.  Don’t judge him if there’s not a single post there, this tagline was only inserted to make him feel more important than he is.  And he loves to write in the third person.

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