Implosion (15 page)

As Congressman Ryan noted in his report, “The effect on personal standards of living will be devastating, and it will be felt as those born today are completing college and beginning their careers. By 2050, workers and families will begin seeing the growth in their wages and incomes erode. Standards of living will begin to stagnate and then decline in real terms. By 2058, the economy enters a free fall, beyond which the catastrophe cannot be measured: CBO cannot model the impact because debt rises to levels the economy cannot support.”
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The Road to Reform . . . ?

Some experts and think tanks believe there is still time to turn things around. At least two have laid out detailed reform plans worth considering.

Congressman Paul Ryan has developed his “Roadmap for America’s Future.” This detailed legislative proposal cuts tax rates and simplifies the tax code to reignite economic growth. It cuts and restrains federal spending. It reforms Social Security and Medicare in ways that protect the existing system for current retirees and those close to retirement while also improving the system for younger workers. For example, Ryan proposes the retirement age be gradually and incrementally increased from sixty-five years old to seventy years old, since people are living and working longer. He also proposes that younger workers can invest some of their current payroll taxes into tax-free personal retirement accounts that permit low-risk investments in mutual funds and annuities. The Ryan plan also includes specific details to balance the budget and reduce federal debt—all, presumably, before an implosion of the American economy occurs.
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The Heritage Foundation has also released a very detailed reform plan. It’s called “Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity.” While the principles are similar to Congressman Ryan’s plan, some of the specifics are different. Both plans call for fully repealing “ObamaCare,” and both create personal retirement accounts within the Social Security system for younger workers. However, while the Ryan plan calls for simplifying the federal tax code from its current six marginal tax brackets down to just two (a 10 percent rate and a 25 percent rate), the Heritage plan calls for a single flat tax rate (not yet determined). Whereas the Ryan plan would hold spending at 19 percent of GDP, the Heritage plan would restrain spending to 18.5 percent of GDP.

The Heritage plan was designed to balance the federal budget by 2021 and reduce the national debt to 30 percent of GDP by 2035. By contrast, because the Ryan plan phases in some of the reforms more gradually than the Heritage plan does, the “Roadmap” does not bring the federal budget into balance until after 2055. That may seem like a long time—and it is—but the Ryan plan should be compared not only with the Heritage plan but more importantly with the fact that President Obama has not laid out a reform plan of his own. Under the current trajectory, the Congressional Budget Office projects deficits as far as the eye can see through the twenty-first century. Without significant changes, the budget will never be balanced in our lifetimes. Worse, the CBO indicates that the national debt will hit a horrifying 185 percent of GDP by 2035.
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Overall, the Heritage plan is much bolder than the Ryan plan, but there are various policy and political challenges to both. What remains to be seen is whether the American people have the stomach for either plan or a variation of one of them. The point is not that one plan is necessarily better than the other. The point I want to make here is that there are at least two serious, credible plans on the table right now that show us in specific ways how we can boost economic growth, create more jobs, reform our entitlement systems, and get ourselves back on the road to fiscal sanity
before
we implode. Perhaps others will develop bold, creative, and compassionate plans that will improve upon what Congressman Ryan and the Heritage Foundation have offered. I hope so. The more serious ideas in the mix, the better. There is still a way out of this mess, and that is good news, but the window to get started on such reforms is rapidly closing.

. . . Or the Road to Ruin?

If we don’t make desperately needed reforms, then we are most certainly on the path to ruin. Indeed, we could be on the road to Greece.

“America is on the road to re-creating Greece’s recent debt crisis,” noted business magazine
Barron’s
in a 2011 issue. “If a country as small and removed as Greece could generate the tremors that it did in the past year, how much worse would a national debt crisis be in the world’s largest economy?”
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The article notes that “Greece, the world’s 27th-largest economy, is a minor player, even in the European Union. Yet a budget deficit of 13.6 percent of gross domestic product spiked its overall debt to 115 percent of GDP. Its debt fell to junk status, and it stood on the edge of bankruptcy. Only the massive May 2010 bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund pulled it back from the brink.”
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Citing sobering data from the Congressional Budget Office,
Barron’s
warned, “If you think debt problems like Greece’s can’t happen here, think again. . . . [Soon], U.S. debt will hit 132 percent of GDP—well above Greece’s 115 percent. Government spending will consume almost one-third of everything America produces—a level only reached at the height of World War II. Even raising taxes to their greatest ratio to the economy in America’s history wouldn’t offset the automatic spending machine. . . . Washington is on the road to Greece.”
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Bottom Line

America in 2012 owes more than $15
trillion
to a range of creditors, many in foreign countries, including Communist China.

That’s bad enough, but it gets worse.

Most Americans don’t even realize that we owe another $57
trillion
to cover a range of “unfunded liabilities,” including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. America’s most respected financial experts—both Republicans and Democrats—are warning us that such staggering levels of current and coming debt could trigger an economic implosion unless we rapidly and courageously make fundamental and sweeping reforms. The good news is that at least two detailed and compelling reforms have been proposed.

Two key questions emerge. First, does Washington have the courage to follow those plans or variations on them? And second, will Americans reward or punish political leaders in Washington for pursuing such reforms?

As important as those questions are, however, there is another even more important question: Will the Lord give us the time we need to make these changes—however difficult and painful they would be—or will he simply choose in his sovereignty to let America implode financially?

CHAPTER TEN

THE WAR AND TERRORISM SCENARIOS

America’s enemies smell blood in the water.

Though I have been writing and speaking about this for years, I remain stunned by how few Americans realize that the leaders of al Qaeda and Iran have explicitly been pursuing a policy of economic jihad against the United States. Yet consider the following quotes:

“If their economy is destroyed, they will be busy with their own affairs rather than enslaving the weak peoples. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means.”

—Osama bin Laden, December 2001
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“We will also aim to continue, by the permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy.”

—Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, top deputy to Osama bin Laden, September 2002
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“Alongside the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, we bled Russia for ten years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. . . . We are continuing this policy to bleed America to the point of bankruptcy. . . . Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on [the 9/11 attacks], while the incident and its aftermath have cost America more than half a trillion dollars. This meant that, by the grace of God, every dollar al Qaeda spent cost America a million dollars and a huge number of jobs. . . . This demonstrates the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan.”

—Osama bin Laden, October 2004
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“No politician can be found in the United States who is capable of saving the U.S. economy from this move toward the valley of downfall.”

—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, April 2008
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“These days, [although] no incident has as yet occurred, oil prices have risen from $12 to $120 a barrel. Now try to calculate how high [the price] of this essential commodity will rise if the enemy acts in a foolhardy manner.”

—Mohammad Ja’far Assadi, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, August 2008
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The weaker the United States has grown economically, the more emboldened those who wish us harm have become—both to exacerbate our economic woes in the hopes of triggering our implosion and to steadily build their own strategic, conventional, and unconventional forces to prepare for the day when they believe they can overtake us or even destroy us.

The Threat of War

The good news: the United States remains the world’s only superpower. At the moment, America has the world’s most fearsome nuclear weapons force and the world’s most powerful and effective Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. It is critical that we maintain strong national defenses, maintain and enhance our ability to project force wherever we need to around the world, and keep a clear eye on our vital national interests.

What are these interests? I believe there are five:

1. We must always safeguard U.S. national security, including carefully protecting our homeland, our coastlines, and our borders.

2. We must prevent major threats by other powers to dominate or control Europe, East Asia, or the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

3. We must maintain access to foreign trade.

4. We must protect Americans at home and around the globe against threats to their lives and well-being.

5. We must maintain unfettered access to resources, particularly energy resources, while specifically developing and defending our own energy resources.
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The bad news: other nations, ideologies, and religious movements are hell-bent on subverting, severely damaging, or outright incapacitating us. They are determined to remove from us the title of “world superpower” and claim it for themselves. Long ago they recognized this would not be easy to accomplish, but they have been patient and persistent, and they increasingly believe the U.S. will soon implode just as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations imploded in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Real and serious threats to our vital national interests are emerging (and in some cases, reemerging) from countries like Russia, China, North Korea, and Pakistan. Each has conventional forces that could threaten our interests. Each has developed chemical and biological weapons. Each has developed nuclear weapons. Each has also developed ballistic missiles capable of delivering these weapons against our homeland or against our allies. What’s more, these nations are forming strategic regional alliances against us, and they are selling weapons and technologies to each other and to other enemies of the United States.

While some of these countries could attack us directly, they could also choose to attack our access to oil in the Middle East or our trade routes in Asia, across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, or through the Suez Canal in hopes of bringing us to our knees financially. They could seek to unleash terrible biological attacks that would shut down international travel and trade. They could release computer viruses that would attack our banking and financial institutions and our communications systems. Now is no time to lower our guard. An open society like the United States is vulnerable to attack—especially at a time of economic weakness.

The Russian Threat

Russia, for example, is becoming increasingly hostile to the United States and is seeking to intimidate and bully our allies while threatening our interests.

Vladimir Putin, the highly provocative and controversial Russian leader, threatened in 2008 to aim nuclear-armed Russian missiles at American allies in Eastern Europe if the U.S. placed missile-defense systems there.
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During the brutally cold winters of 2006 and 2009, Russia cut off oil and gas supplies to Ukraine, a democratic ally of ours, to undermine the government there, force Ukrainians to pay drastically higher energy prices, and warn the rest of Europe, which relies on Russian gas supplies, not to cross the Kremlin. In 2008 Russia actually invaded the nation of Georgia, another of our democratic allies in Eastern Europe. More recently, Putin denounced America as a “parasite.” He told students in Russia that the U.S. “is living beyond its means and shifting part of the weight of its problems onto the world economy, acting to some extent as a parasite on the global economy and its dollar monopoly position.”
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Russia, meanwhile, is selling advanced weaponry and even nuclear technology to Iran and other countries opposed to the U.S. The Kremlin has both strategic and conventional forces that could move southward to threaten Israel and attempt to gain control of the oil-rich Middle East. Indeed, as I wrote about in detail in my book
Epicenter
, Bible prophecies found in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 indicate that Russia will form an alliance with Iran, Turkey, Libya, Sudan, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa to come against Israel in the last days. Trends over the last two decades—and notably in the past few years—suggest we are getting increasingly close to the fulfillment of the “war of Gog and Magog” prophecies.
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We must, therefore, be increasingly vigilant about this red storm rising. When Russia was the core of the Soviet Union, her leaders in the Kremlin actually threatened to “bury” the United States, and today, in light of certain leaders’ words and actions, we cannot assume they have all abandoned this objective.
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The Chinese Threat

China is also a serious concern for the United States.

Beijing has a huge and growing conventional military along with its significant nuclear force. Together with an increasingly well-equipped air force, navy, and ground forces—including the launch in 2011 of its first aircraft carrier and the intensive development of a ballistic missile capable of destroying American aircraft carriers—Beijing has the ability to cut off our trade routes in the Pacific Rim, deny us passage through the Panama Canal (which they now effectively own), or seize the democracy of Taiwan, one of our key allies in East Asia.
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Yes, China is heavily engaged in commercial trade with the U.S., which binds our countries together. And no, China is not currently posing a direct military threat against us. But Beijing’s national strategy is known as
taoguangyanghui
, which can be translated as, “Hide our capabilities; bide our time.”
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That is exactly what the Chinese are doing: carefully—at times stealthily—building their military forces while biding their time and waiting for the best moment to move. A careful study of the writings and sayings of the Communist leaders in Beijing clearly indicates they want to dominate the Pacific Rim and become a world superpower, if not
the
world superpower.

There should be no question that some Chinese leaders are prepared to use lethal force—even nuclear weapons—against the United States when and if they feel the time is right or if the U.S. gets in the way of one of their most cherished objectives. In late 1995, a top Chinese general told a Clinton administration official that the U.S. would not defend Taiwan if China were to attack and seize the technology-rich island democracy. Why? Because Americans “care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan,” the general said in a statement widely perceived as a Chinese threat to rain nuclear weapons down on the California city if the U.S. were to get in China’s way.
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Then came this headline in the
New York Times
in 2005: “Chinese General Threatens Use of A-Bombs If U.S. Intrudes.” “China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said Thursday,” the
Times
reported. “‘If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,’ the official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing.”
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China, along with other countries around the world, is also developing additional strategies to threaten us, including increasingly advanced cyberwarfare capacities to infiltrate, corrupt, and take down the computer systems that run our national defenses and national economy; antisatellite weapons to disrupt our military and civilian communications systems; and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) capabilities that could suddenly and catastrophically render our electrical and electronic networks, including our communications and banking systems, ineffective. As with the Russians, we dare not let down our guard with the Chinese.

The Iranian Threat

The Islamic Republic of Iran is of particular concern because its senior leaders believe that the Islamic Revolution that began in 1979 is now reaching its climax. They have stated publicly that the end of the world is increasingly close at hand. They have taught that the way to hasten the arrival or appearance on earth of the so-called Islamic messiah known as the “Twelfth Imam” or the “Mahdi” is to destroy Israel, which they call the “Little Satan,” and the United States, which they call the “Great Satan.”

What’s more, they have explicitly vowed to annihilate the United States and Israel and have urged Muslims to envision a world without America and Zionism. They believe Allah has chosen them to create chaos and carnage on the planet. The key leaders in Iran seem determined to accomplish their apocalyptic, genocidal mission. They are steadily enriching uranium and developing nuclear weapons. Tehran is building alliances with Russia, China, and North Korea and has cooperated with those countries on the development of offensive and defensive weapons systems. For example, they are building and buying increasingly longer-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads. These missiles are capable of hitting Israel and our allies in the Middle East and Europe. Before long, Iranian long-range missiles will be able to reach the continental United States. Already, Iran (along with several other countries) has the ability to attack the U.S. homeland or our allies around the world by firing short- and medium-range missiles from commercial container ships.
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Iranian leaders also continue to aggressively export their Islamic Revolution to countries throughout the Middle East and around the world. They are harboring scores of al Qaeda terrorists and leaders inside Iranian cities and allowing terrorists to crisscross their territory. They are making a concerted effort to enlarge the reach of terrorist operations by building strategic alliances with other jihadist organizations, regardless of their theological differences. They claim to be building a network of between forty thousand and seventy thousand suicide bombers ready to strike Israeli, American, and British targets.
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What’s more, over the past decade they have sent suicide bombers, other insurgents, money, and weapons into Iraq and Afghanistan to attack American and coalition forces.

Also troubling are the alliances Iran is making with countries like Venezuela, an increasingly hostile Turkey, and an Egypt troubled by growing chaos, all of which are demonstrating growing anti–U.S. sentiments. Some dismiss Iran as a nuisance and not a threat, but the mullahs and ayatollahs who rule Tehran and believe in the coming of the Twelfth Imam are truly evil and must not be overlooked or underestimated, for to misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.