We elect leaders to essentially make choices about the country’s future on our behalf. In the case of Congress, we elect these leaders to specifically make choices on the budget. Yet, for years, our leaders refuse to make the hard choices. Instead, they endlessly defer; they enact policies that may increase economic growth in the near-term, but rarely make wise investments for the future. The longer this occurs—and the more severe the spending becomes—the greater chance there will be for a complete breakdown of the system. We are rapidly approaching that entropic point.

Senator Rand Paul was right in voicing his concern over the debt level of this country because, in the medium-to-long-term, it’s a grave (and growing) threat. Congress deferring until March 2019 to handle the budget again could end up working out well (if congressional leaders sat down and mapped out a plan to address things like entitlement reform and overall spending reductions). However, should Congress continue its business-as-usual approach to governing between now and 2019, whatever economic gains we enjoy over the next few years from regulation reductions and the tax cuts, will be diminished (and eventually erased) by the failure to restrain our deficit spending and to reduce the debt.