My daughter who lives in Wyoming called my attention to a bumper
sticker, white letters on a black field, bearing the
message, "Please don't tell Obama what comes after a
trillion!"
There are only two other bumper stickers which I ever considered
affixing to my car. One read, "Aubrey Maturin in '08–Not a moment
to lose!" alluding to the two famous characters from the Patrick
O'Brian sea-faring novels.
The other was "TOM IZZO FOR PRESIDENT," referring to the national
champion coach of the Michigan State University Spartans
basketball team, a great coach and a fine man.
The other day I saw another one, very tempting, but a bit snarky:
"Honk if I'm paying your mortgage."
But I could not resist my daughter nor the whimsy and humor of
the bumper sticker about President Obama and trillions of
dollars. So I put it on my rear window, hoping that I would not
be rewarded with a brick through the glass.
The bumper sticker was a hoot and quite timely given talk of a
second round of stimulus spending. Calling for another round of
spending is awfully premature since only a fraction of the
stimulus package has gotten out the door. Isn't it a bit early to
be considering more spending, debt and taxes? Even on Keynesian
grounds, it is hard to expect a stimulus to occur when the lion's
share of the money has not yet found its way into the economy. In
fairness, the Obama administration has not been calling
for a second stimulus, although Democratic Governor Ed Rendell of
Pennsylvania has called for it as have other left-of-center
economists.
The good news is that the Republicans in the House and even the
Senate are digging in on this issue. Moreover, there is hope in
the air that the Blue Dog Democrats are in the process of finding
their green eyeshades, which they seem to have misplaced these
last few months.
The Republicans, of course, are laboring under a heavy
credibility deficit due to their lack of fiscal probity and
responsibility while controlling three branches of government for
nearly eight years. Having besotted themselves in a spending
spree exceeding Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and, despite
eight years of prosperity, failing to attend to hemorrhaging
entitlement spending and aggravating the problem through the
creation of a prescription drug benefit for seniors, they now
find themselves in a kind of public relations Siberia as it
relates to what was once one of their core issues.
The Democrats, as much as the Republicans, are complicit in a
disaster which has been decades in the making and continues on
its destructive path driven by ongoing retirements of the Baby
Boomers. Even the Washington Post, citing recent studies
by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), runs lead editorials
with titles like "The
Debt Tsunami."
"To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is
unsustainable," opines the Post.
Under reasonable assumptions, the CBO says the publicly held debt
of the U.S. government is heading to 82 percent of GDP by 2019,
double that of 2008. With increasing interest payments over time,
the debt will reach a record level of 113 percent of GDP in 2026
and 200 percent in 2038.
"This clearly creates a scenario where the country's going to go
bankrupt. It's almost that simple," said Senator Judd Gregg
(N.H.), senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. "One
would hope these numbers would wake somebody up." Ya think?
The cumulative national debt, a recession, and an aging
population are putting enormous pressure on the federal
government and, ultimately, taxpayers, young ones at that.
The Republicans were replaced by Democrats who, having justly
denounced the GOP for running up trillions of dollars worth of
debt, are now trying to up the ante with more record spending
barely disguised by the fig leaf of the stimulus package. Here's
the new boss, same as the old boss. The GOP, finding itself in
the political wilderness, having managed to destroy its branding
for fiscal conservatism, has been handed a "Get Out of Jail Free"
card (to mix metaphors) by the party now in power which is
spending unimagined sums of taxpayers' dollars. Here is a chance
for Republicans to re-brand themselves. But this time they have
to mean it and scrap the pork, the earmarks and the subsidies for
their favored children. Can they seize the moment?
But for the massive and unprecedented level of spending by the
current Administration and Congress, Americans would not pay any
attention to the claims of Republicans regarding excessive
spending, taxes and debt. There is, however, a restiveness in the
American public that might make it receptive to a serious,
sustained critique of the current policy of spending as if there
was no tomorrow.
While the Republicans should work to regain their reputation for
fiscal conservatism, merely resisting the usual round of spending
by the party in power is not going to save the nation. They have
to get serious about a bipartisan approach to reforming
entitlements. There is simply no other way to get America back on
the wagon without some kind of political solution to the
financial plight of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
In the face of the tsunami of entitlement-driven debt, the really
horrible sin is one of omission, i.e., failure to engage the
public, the opposition and rank-and-file Republicans on one of
the greatest issues of our time.
The moral, economic and political dilemma facing the GOP is what
to do when the culture has shifted so drastically in favor of
government welfare and dependencies, not just for poor people,
but businesses, states, cities, farmers, ranchers, seniors and
the middle class as a whole? Is there any historical precedent
for rolling back or reducing middle-class entitlements once
granted? Can the party of Lincoln resist substantial tax
increases in its quest to keep the nation from bankruptcy? Is any
kind of consensus possible to shape tax increases in such a way
as to limit disincentives for investment, work and productivity
while generating a reasonable amount of revenue?
All good questions. Our children and grandchildren await the
answers.
topics:
Federal Budget, Entitlements, Deficits
