On the phone on Thursday, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) was
politely emphatic: “We’ve never been here before.” And
again: “We’ve never been here before.”
“Here,” in DeMint’s parlance, was the nation’s exceedingly
precarious fiscal condition, exacerbated by a fast-approaching
political tipping point as well; together they indicate that “the
2012 election will be a make-or-break moment for America.” That
last quote is from DeMint’s new book, released this week, called
Now or Never: Saving American From Economic Collapse. In
an extended interview on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart this
week, Stewart complained to DeMint that the book contained too much
“apocalyptic” rhetoric, and that people like him on the left side
of the spectrum would be too turned off by such rhetoric to
consider the book’s substance.
To which, DeMint basically told me that he didn’t mean to
be apocalyptic — just accurate.
“The whole point of the book,” he said, “is to help create
a sense of urgency, but in a way that calmly and rationally goes
through the facts of where we are and why we’re here. The key
statistics, about the debt relative to the size of our economy and
relative to the projected size of our economy in the future, are
alarming.” With the debt of $15 trillion now equaling the size of
the entire economy, he said, he looks at it like a businessman
looking at his balance sheet and realizing that “our short-term
debt is as large as our annual sales, plus you have to borrow even
more money every day just to keep the lights on.” Such a situation,
he writes in Now or Never, is “demonstrably
unsustainable,” and it is “insane.”
I haven’t had time to read the whole book, but I’ve read
every word of about 50 pages and skimmed much of the rest. It’s
well worth the time.
He writes that we have:
… weakened an American culture once renowned throughout
the world for its spirit of independence, rugged individualism,
strong work ethic, commitment to family, and moral dignity. For
example, for decades the federal government has encouraged unwed
births, a major cause of poverty, school dropouts, drug use,
juvenile delinquency, and incarceration. Forty percent of American
children, including 70 percent of African-Americans, are now born
out of wedlock. Rather than encouraging independence and personal
responsibility, our government continues to encourage irresponsible
and destructive behavior while expanding welfare and entitlement
programs that force millions of Americans into dependency on
taxpayer-funded programs. Some politicians have suggested that
social issues be set aside while we address our fiscal crisis, but
this view belies the real root causes of the nation’s reckless
spending and crushing debt. Cultural pathologies caused by the
unintended consequences of naïve social policies have contributed
to many of America’s economic and fiscal problems. The economic
crisis was caused by too much government. The same is true of many
of our social crises, where the solutions must also mean getting
away from government interference and largesse.
Completely aside from the fact that he sounds exactly like
Rick Santorum in several of the presidential debates, DeMint is
onto something here. In our phone interview, he made a point of
noting that we still have time to turn things around economically,
but only a small window of time before the debt is too onerous to
overcome — and that only a small political window is open as well.
Using very rough numbers for illustration, he said: “Nearly 20
percent of Americans are working for governments at one level or
another; another 20 percent are largely dependent on Social
Security and Medicare; and another 10 percent are on some
means-tested welfare program and completely dependent on government
for their daily bread — and many of these groups are fairly well
organized politically, so getting them to vote for less government
is increasingly difficult.”
With basically half the country being net receivers of
government largesse rather than net donors, it will take only a
small additional push for the left to create a virtually permanent
majority in favor of higher taxes and higher spending ad
infinitum, world without end, Amen.
All of which makes 2012 perhaps the last chance to turn
things around.
Toward that end, by the way, DeMint’s “Senate
Conservatives Fund” is busily assessing candidates hoping to lead a
Republican takeover of the Senate. (So far it has endorsed four —
Mark Neumann in Wisconsin, Don Stenberg in Nebraska, Ted Cruz in
Texas, and Josh Mandel in Ohio — but that is beside the point of
this column.) For all the attention to the presidential race,
DeMint believes that a Republican takeover of the Senate, and a
conservative majority within the GOP caucus there, are both
eminently achievable and necessary for the country’s
future.
“We need five or six more folks like [freshman senators]
Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, folks who will take a stand,”
he said.
For that to happen, and for America to pull back from the
cliff, DeMint writes in the last section of his book, individual
American citizens absolutely must get more involved in the often
“messy and unpleasant,” but also necessary and rewarding, realm of
politics. “There are hundreds of small things you can do,” he
writes, “that will make a big difference.”
DeMint is, of course, not just politically to the right,
but he’s also right on target.
“We’re a bottom-up country,” he told me. “We’re capable of
a lot of self-governance. We can do this.”
