FACE THE HARD FACTS ON DEFICIT SPENDING
By Steven E. Davis
March 19, 2008
There is one campaign slogan we won't hear this 2008 election season: "If elected, I will cut popular entitlement programs and raise your taxes."
Politicians, who are consummate people-pleasers, prefer to make promises of good news: "We will make the middle class our priority." "We will give all people health insurance." "No new taxes." "We can grow out of this deficit," etc.
As responsible citizens, we have to demand that our politicians level with us on how they plan to change our national habit of deficit spending and tell us their specific proposals on how they plan to pay down the debt.
Some facts:
• Our national debt is now $9 trillion -- which is the same as every man, woman and child in this country owing $30,000.
• In 31 of the past 35 years, we have run deficit budgets (we took in less than we spent).
• In the fiscal year 2006, our interest payment on the national debt made up 8.5 percent of the federal budget (a mere $266.6 billion). Twenty-four percent of our national debt is owed to foreign countries.
Compounding these difficult numbers is the fact that we will soon be experiencing a time of unprecedented stress on our tax base as baby boomers retire and start drawing Medicare and Social Security. Unless we make substantial changes by 2040, nearly every penny collected in taxes will go toward paying Medicare, Social Security and interest on the debt.
Some myths that need busting with respect to solving our budget deficit and national debt:
• Stopping the war in Iraq would not save enough money to solve our deficit/debt problems.
• Ending President Bush's tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans would help with revenue but will not be enough to produce nondeficit spending and pay down the debt.
• Eliminating all waste and fraud in government spending, while a good idea, would not be sufficient to reverse our desperate budgetary situation.
"So why should I care about this budget deficit/debt issue?" some may ask. If the government's resources are all directed at Social Security, Medicare and the debt, there will be no money to invest in research, offer help with college loans, enforce health and safety laws, take care of national parks, provide a military, assure our safety from external threats and other functions we generally expect the government to carry out.
If the trend continues, these problems will be foisted off on our children and grandchildren, who had no part in creating these dire circumstances. Blithely ignoring this problem is not a viable option either.
As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said about deficit spending and the debt in January 2007: "The longer we wait, the more severe, the more draconian, the more difficult the adjustment is going to be."
I think the right time to start was about 10 years ago.
The more information a citizen can obtain on this complex subject can only be helpful. A simplified introduction to this problem and solution alternatives is the recently published book, "Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis" by Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson. The Concord Coalition's Web site, www.concordcoalition.org, and Bittle and Johnson's Web sites, www.facingup.org and www.publicagenda.org, also provide extensive information and tips on being an informed voter and what activities you can do that will help address this problem.
If we are willing to make sacrifices, we can resolve this admittedly large problem. We owe our children and grandchildren nothing less.
Steven E. Davis lives in Wichita.