The Price Of Discipleship

In the mid-1960s President Lyndon Johnson introduced a so-called war on poverty. At about the same time he got involved in escalating the American participation in the Vietnam war. It soon began to cost about two billion dollars per month. He was unwilling to raise taxes. The attempt to wage the wars on two fronts, domestic and international, soon affected the economy adversely.

Through the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations the effects of deficits sent inflation rates up drastically. The Reagan administration managed to dampen the inflation but it also greatly increased the national debt so that by the '90s economists and politicians became alarmed. Even the Gramm-Rudman Bill, which was to reduce the deficit and lead to a balanced budget, did little to mov…