The South Shore Press traveled to the Millyard Museum in Manchester, NH to hear “Joe From Texas” share a critically important message that he wants families to hear from across the country, from Long Beach to Long Island.
His mission: crisscross America to raise awareness to eliminate the national debt, which is $34 trillion and growing. Think of it this way: every single man, woman, and child in Suffolk County would have to personally pay $101,000 on the spot to erase the national debt.
His website, JoeFromTexas.com, has a running tab on how high the national debt is climbing. If every Long Island household came up with a monthly payment plan to pay off the national debt, they would have to shell out $1,000 per month for 22 years to pay it off.
This staggering number is almost as big as the combined economies of China, India, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan.
Keep in mind, two of those countries were destroyed by the United States in World War II.
“We bombed Germany. Japan dug themselves out of the rubble of the atomic bomb. They built their country back. Japan is the number one lender to America today. That’s an embarrassment. How can you go from being a superpower in 1945 to borrowing money from the country that you bombed with an atomic bomb? It’s mismanagement on a gross scale,” said Joe From Texas (whose last name is Penland) during a panel discussion that included United States Senator Joe Manchin, former Congressman Jeb Bradley, and former Comptroller of the United States General David Walker.
Twelve years after WWII, Joe From Texas’s father died. His family was in dire straits.
“My father had a massive stroke.The day before, he was drinking. He drank every day. We had nothing in the cupboard but his whiskey. We were poor, instantly. Couldn’t eat for two weeks. We had $200 per month in social security. If it weren’t for social security we would have starved to death,” said Penland.
To pay for his father’s funeral, Penland cut the grass at the funeral home for a few months. His mother even had to take out a $100 loan from the bank to feed the family, a debt friends and neighbors helped pay back.
Joe From Texas then lived the arc of the American Dream, building a multi-million dollar company called Quality Mat Company, based in Beaumont, Texas. They sell durable mats so that heavy equipment won’t sink in rainy and muddy conditions. They are one of the largest Mat sellers in the world.
Now the father of five, grandfather of eight, and great-grandfather of eight fights to reduce the national debt. He’s been to Capitol Hill to speak to Congressmen. In New Hampshire he spoke to an interested crowd of politicians and college students. Joe From Texas will travel anywhere, at any time, to convince Americans that the national debt crisis is the most dangerous threat to national security.
“We need to wake up Washington. I’m not a politician. I’m not a celebrity. I’m not asking for money. I’m asking people to pay attention. If America fails financially, the rest of the world is going to be in trouble,” concluded Penland.