Our government in Washington has made $88.6 trillion in promises
it cannot afford to keep. By some reliable estimates, the national
debt will become unsustainable by 2037. Social Security
expenditures are beginning to exceed payroll tax revenues. Medicare
has been in this condition since 2008. The annual federal budget
deficit is almost as large the early Clinton-era federal budget.
Some state governments are,
pace the columnist E.J. Dionne, literally
bankrupt.
How then do our leaders respond? With “austerity” measures
that barely cut any spending and add trillions to the debt. Others
assert that the shortfalls are simply the consequence of the
recession. Ergo, we should spend our way out of the recession.
Consider it borrowing our way out of debt. But the biggest problem
is not the political class’s innumeracy. It’s their lack of
restraint. Presented with a problem, they are seized with the
uncontrollable urge to “Do Something,” without knowing how that
something will be paid for, whether it will work, or what the
consequences will be.
Are there older Americans who must board buses to Canada
in order to fill their prescriptions? Then we must pass a Medicare
prescription drug benefit, even if it is not paid for and boosts
the original entitlement’s already staggering unfunded liabilities
to the tune of trillions. Are there people out of work? We must
have a stimulus program, even if it is not paid for and there is
debate over whether it could even work at a conceptual
level.
Sometimes, the beneficiaries of federal benevolence need
not even be American voters. In response to the humanitarian crisis
being inflicted on Libya by its undeniably brutal dictator,
Washington interventionists cry out for a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone
over the country. This despite the fact that there is no consensus
the no-fly zone will work, no real plan for what we would do if it
failed, no idea of who would be empowered in the event of its
success, and no clear constitutional mandate to be behaving as a
world government in embryo.
In each of the above examples, the problem being described
is very real. But the “solutions” are often half-baked.
On Libya, the coalition of the willing among the
politicians and pundits is eerily familiar. Writes
the columnist Ross Douthat, “Indeed, it’s striking how quickly the
bipartisan coalition that backed the Iraq invasion has reassembled
itself to urge President Obama to use military force against
Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi.” The band has gotten back together in
time for another march to war.
If Obama heeds their advice and things go badly, he should
expect the Republican hawks to abandon him as quickly as the
pro-war Democrats and liberal interventionists turned against
George W. Bush on Iraq. Remember that Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton,
John Kerry, and John Edwards were among those who voted with Bush
before the going got tough — and the poll numbers went
south.
The political class is slow to learn from its mistakes
because it refuses to acknowledge them. According to one or both
major parties, the Iraq adventure, the Wall Street bailout, the
stimulus package, the monetary policies that helped inflate the
housing bubble, and virtually every major federal undertaking with
the possible exception of Prohibition were smashing successes. And
maybe even Prohibition, like communism, would have worked if only
the right people had been in charge.
So it should come as no surprise that we hear people
insisting that the government isn’t broke, Social Security is just
fine, Medicare is but one Obamacare away from being placed on a
more secure financial footing. The politician who wishes to “Do
Something” can do no wrong. Or if something does go wrong, another
politician or party can be blamed later on.
The problem isn’t just a matter of money. The larger
crisis is due to a federal government without limit, led by people
with a faith in their infinite capacity for problem-solving matched
only by their mind-numbing obliviousness to their myriad failures.
On the rare occasions they are confronted with those failures, our
political masters can only promise that things will be different
this time.
Many a failed relationship has been revived by such
promises, which frequently serve as a prelude to additional pain
and disappointment. It’s a cliché that second marriages represent
the triumph of hope over experience. The country’s present
condition represents the triumph of Hope and Change over the
Constitution.
