There is no good news about the President’s proposed budget, and for once media outlets are innocent in the matter. Federal spending is at a crisis point as deficits and debt explode, and neither political party has what it takes to forestall the approaching fiscal meltdown. “Republicans and Democrats are in complete denial on these issues,” said Robert D. Reischauer, former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Projected budget shortfalls for 2008 and 2009 total nearly $1 trillion, an outrageous improvidence pushing the national debt toward $11 trillion. Be sure of this, there will be a payday someday with average Americans footing the bill.
Infuriatingly cavalier, Jim Nussle, former Republican congressman and current director of the Office of Management and Budget, has expressed better than anyone the complete abdication of fiduciary responsibility evident as our nation’s leaders bleed the country dry. According to the New York Times News Service, Nussle said there was little short-run reason to worry. “It’s a manageable debt,” said Nussle, proving many GOPers are feckless shadows of the party’s conservative founders. The deficit “in sheer dollar terms doesn’t mean anything,” said the OBM head, no doubt because he won’t have to pay it back, with interest. American politicians spend and spend, and American taxpayers continually pick up the tab.
Slow learners to a fault, Republicans still haven’t grasped the lesson of 2006, losing control of both Houses of Congress in large part because, for the better part of twelve years, they spent like Democrats. President Bush signed pork laden spending bills, not finding his veto pen until Pelosi and Reid were in control, far too late. On the other hand, the two likely Democratic presidential hopefuls, Clinton and Obama, are campaigning on promises of huge increases in government philanthropy. Both say the increased spending will be paid for by higher taxes on the rich, but analysts “know that step would not raise enough money to pay for the spending programs they propose.” Fiscally conservative citizens are fresh out of champions.
Voters should not be fooled by talk of returning to the budget surpluses of the late 1990s. A confluence of factors were at work in those years that are not duplicable beyond next January. Then, a fresh and zealous Republican majority battled President Bill Clinton over the 1995 budget, temporarily shutting down the federal government. Caving to conservative pressure, the President signed sweeping welfare reform legislation, saving the country billions. Hillary’s proposed health care plan was roundly rejected. Finally and perhaps most important, the dot-com boom generated unexpectedly large tax revenues. This mix of 1990s real politics will not magically reappear in 2009, nor will anything close to a balanced budget.
Borrowing from Jack Webb, here are “just the facts ma’am.” The federal government is too big, operating in arenas never intended as purviews of a limited government. The national debt is huge and growing by leaps and bounds, nearly doubling since 2001. Bureaucratic waste, counter-productive programs, and ballooning entitlements threaten America’s financial well-being. Republicans yawn at knee-weakening debt while Democrats want to spend even more. Much of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are off budget — meaning they are not included in the deficit estimates cited above — because those conflicts are handled “as emergency spending and [are] therefore outside normal budget channels.” President Bush’s estimate of a balanced budget by 2012 “is based on a series of overly optimistic assumptions,” according to the LA Times. The dollar is at its weakest point in history precisely because of our unwillingness to adhere to sound fiscal policies.
There are no candidates promising to address any of this, let alone fix it. Too bad, there’s a lot at stake.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.” (Emphasis added, authorship disputed)
“Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.” (Emphasis added, authorship disputed)
“Democracy left to itself tends to surrender liberty to the passions for security and equality, and thus to end in a new soft despotism, tied down with a thousand silken threads by a benign authority.” Michael Novak.
