Conservatives like to poke fun at what has become a standard liberal ploy, positing proposed policies as crisis solutions. To my knowledge the Clintons invented this gambit, couching HillaryCare in the garb of emergency legislation. To a joint session of Congress on September 22, 1993, President Clinton outlined Mrs. Clinton’s bold plan, concluding with a powerful admonition to "confront this crisis." That a real crisis didn’t exist, manifestly obvious some fourteen years hence, is beside the point. The crisis approach had been born and would be used repeatedly to secure urgent action, most notably by Al Gore. Mr. Gore has consistently referred to the earth’s increasing temperature in cataclysmic terms. For instance, in a speech titled "Global Warming Is an Immediate Crisis" at the New York University School of Law on September 18, 2006, the former Vice President said, "Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several ‘tipping points’ that could – within as little as 10 years – make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization." Yikes! Clearly, corrective action cannot wait. The future of humanity is at stake! Or, as my nephew likes to say, "Be afraid. Be very afraid!"
Having rejected this nonsense in toto, I nevertheless must report on a disturbing blurb in today’s local paper. Meriting only a mention in the "In Brief" section on page A3 in Riverside County’s Press-Enterprise, the headline delivered what should be a chilling message: "Baby boomer No.1 files for Social Security." In a lighthearted ceremony, a boomer born at one second after midnight on January 1, 1946 applied for benefits. Over the next two decades, 10,000 people a day will become eligible to receive Social Security payments. Are you reaching for your calculator? Worse, three years from now this huge group will be lining up for Medicare coverage. Crisis? Not yet, but be concerned, be very concerned.
We are embarking on the uncharted waters of unfunded liabilities. Our government has made enormous promises which will cost trillions of dollars to fulfill, but there is one small problem — those trillions of dollars do not exist. In Running On Empty, Peter Peterson’s excellent book and one highly recommended to people who want to be very afraid, the author paints a truly disturbing picture of our government’s economic future. Put simply here because of space limits, the future unfunded liabilities of just Social Security and Medicare have been estimated to be as high as $74 trillion, according to trustees of those two programs. Add to that the current national debt of more than $9 trillion, our government’s inability to curb ever-increasing spending, decreasing birth rates and increasing longevity, and the political impossibility of cutting entitlements and we arrive at the troubling conclusion that an American financial meltdown is inevitable.
Don’t want to take my word for it? Fine, here’s what the U.S. Office of Management and Budget said in 2003: "These long-term budget projections show clearly that the budget is on an unsustainable path…" The Comptroller General of the United States is no less pessimistic: "Taken together, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid represent an unsustainable burden on future generations." Prudence dictates that remedial action be initiated now. Alan Greenspan, among many others, has made the obvious point that the longer we put off dealing with this issue, the more painful the corrective action will be. More challenging still is the reality that merely balancing the budget will not help. Year after year of huge budget surpluses will be necessary to fund these programs, if we want to keep them at all. Tough choices await our future leaders.
The simple truth is that our government must be required to spend less than it takes in, a lot less. Every spendthrift financial head-of-household learns that lesson sooner or later, and it is high time American politicians are held accountable for their economic shortsightedness. I’ll give Mr. Peterson the last word: "Our problems are not yet intractable, [but] both political parties are increasingly incorrigible. They are not facing our problems, they are running from them. They are locked into a politics of denial, distraction, and self-indulgence that can only be overcome if readers like you take back the country from ideologues and spin doctors of both the left and the right. I believe a critical mass of ordinary Americans now sense that the country is on the wrong economic course and are willing to do something about it. I fervently hope so. We can’t expect politicians to do it for us. We the people must make it possible for politicians to do the right thing."
That was written in 2004. Since then the economic and political landscape has not improved, but worsened. Be concerned, be very concerned.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Politics