Fiscal Cancer (budget deficits and government debt)
“Fiscal cancer” is a term used to describe a government’s budget deficits and its debt. Cancer has often been described as a “silent killer.” Government debt has also been called a “silent killer.”
The term “fiscal cancer” has been cited in print since at least 1944, but it has been most frequently used in the 2000s.
Wikipedia: Cancer
Cancer (medical term: malignant neoplasm) is a class of diseases in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth (division beyond the normal limits), invasion (intrusion on and destruction of adjacent tissues), and sometimes metastasis (spread to other locations in the body via lymph or blood). These three malignant properties of cancers differentiate them from benign tumors, which are self-limited, and do not invade or metastasize. Most cancers form a tumor but some, like leukemia, do not. The branch of medicine concerned with the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer is oncology.
9 October 1944, Ironwood (MI) Daily Globe, “The National Whirligig” by Ray Tucker, pg. 10, cols. 6-7:
The internal fiscal cancer is in large measure responsible for the breakdowns in supplies and military morale that are bringing defeats in the Kwangsi Province and depriving General Chennault of his airfields.
12 April 1950, Hartford (CT) Courant, pg. 17:
He declared: “Deficit financing is a fiscal cancer that feeds on the body of the people s savings anil slowly but surely destroys it.”
4 February 1971, Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, pg. 4, col. 3:
Tax Program
Is Fiscal Cancer
(...)
It’s fiscal cancer I’m talking about, Senator…the disease that’s imminently going to destroy me and my fellow New Yorkers if intensified by Governor Rockefeller.
1 July 1971, Bemidji (MN) Pioneer, “Results don’t justify session costs” by Orlin Folwick, pg. 2, col. 5:
Since they have not shown much interest in cutting out the fiscal cancer—too much government and too little thought about encouraging the individual to serve his own enterprise—this may be the best taxpayers can hope for.
Google News Archive
15 January 1976, The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA), “Reagan’s decentralization proposal makes sense” by James J. Kilpatrick, pg. 4, col. 5:
Federal spending, let us face it, is out of hand. WIth the best will in the world, neither Congress nor the White House can bring these monstrous outlays under control. The figures are literally beyond comprehension. THe mind of man is incapable of comprehending the expenditure of more than a billion dollars a day. Recurring deficits—staggering deficits—have become an inflationary way of life. The fiscal cancer cries out for surgical relief.
21 January 1995, Indiana (PA) Gazette, “Both parties abandon the majority” by Hodding Carter III, pg. 2, col. 4:
Finally, it is flat-out deceit to offer procedural gimmicks and institutional rejiggering in place of hard choices about the government’s underlying fiscal cancer.
Salon.com
Fighting the “fiscal cancer”
Geraldine Sealey
Apr 7, 2004 | John Kerry gave a major economic address today at Georgetown University. Here are some choice excerpts:
“In the last three years, the federal budget has gone from record surpluses to record deficits—which, if left unchecked, can become a fiscal cancer that will erode any recovery and threaten the prospect of a lasting prosperity.”
Google Books
America for Sale:
Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression, and Preserving USA Sovereignty
By Jerome R. Corsi
Threshold
2009
Pg. 25:
“We suffer from a fiscal cancer that is growing within us and if we do not treat it, the cancer will have massive consequences for our country,” he said.
(David M. Walker, former comptroller general of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office—ed.)
NASDAQ (November 10, 2009)
Sens:Won’t Vote To Lift Debt Ceiling Without Action On Spending
By Corey Boles, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Two Democratic senators said Tuesday they wouldn’t vote to support an increase in the nation’s debt ceiling without corresponding action to address the country’s long term fiscal imbalances.
(...)
The federal government ran a record-high budget deficit of $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009. In October, the first month of fiscal 2010, it went a further $175 billion into the red.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D., Tenn.), another long-time advocate of firm action to reign in out of control federal spending, painted an even more harsh scenario.
“We have fiscal cancer and it is metastasizing at the rate that very soon no surgery, no chemotherapy, no radiation will be able to cure the problem,” he told the panel.
Examiner.com
Jim Cooper Testifies Debt is a Dangerous “Fiscal Cancer” After Voting for Pelosi’s Health Care Bill
November 10, 4:25 PM
Nashville Conservative Examiner
Ken Marrero
The Tennessean today reported that Tennessee 5th District Democrat Jim Cooper testified at a Senate hearing and said “... that the country’s huge debt is a “fiscal cancer.””
The Tennessean goes on to report that Rep. Cooper has authored a bill to address the issue and “... create a bi-partisan commission that would look at entitlement programs that are driving deficit spending and make recommendations that Congress could approve or disapprove but not amend.”
This from a Congressman who voted, less than 72 hours before to expand the country’s debt and usher in a deficit spending entitlement program the likes of which were contemplated only in the dreams of die-hard Democrats.