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Jewish World Review March 22, 2011 / 16 Adar II, 5771 The national debt is just the tip of the iceberg By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Soldiers know it is dangerous to attack a prepared position without reconnoitering it first, or softening it up with artillery.
And soldiers know it is folly to abandon a flanking attack which is working for a banzai charge.
These are bad things to do in politics, too.
We face a fiscal emergency which is difficult to overstate. Our national debt is nearing $14.2 trillion, equivalent to the value of all the goods and services produced in the United States last year. And we're adding to that debt at the rate of $7.9 billion a day.
The national debt is just the tip of the iceberg. The U.S. has $88.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities, according to the Government Accountability Office. Before the economic collapse in 2008, the gross domestic product of every country on earth, added together, was just $61.4 trillion.
The unfunded liabilities chiefly are for entitlement programs. The largest of these is Social Security. Last year, more was paid out in benefits than was paid in in payroll taxes. The $41 billion deficit will get much worse fast as more baby boomers retire and unemployment remains high. Medicare and Medicaid are in even worse fiscal shape.
One political party is unconcerned about the fiscal crisis. Some conservatives think the other isn't concerned enough.
The Senate rejected March 10 competing plans to fund the federal government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year, which ends Sep. 30. House Republicans wanted to trim spending by $61 billion. Senate Democrats said that was "draconian." They would accept no more than $10 billion in cuts.
So House Republicans passed a continuing resolution to fund the government through April 8, while trimming another $6 billion. Senate Democrats accepted it.
"House Republicans have been winning the dollar debate," said Major Garrett of the National Journal. "Senate Democrats have been retreating in billion dollar increments."
Democrats are sharply divided on how much to cut spending. The White House is providing no leadership. Public opinion supports GOP efforts to cut spending without shutting down the government, noted Keith Hennessey, an economic adviser to President Bush. This is pretty much the ideal environment to incrementally cut spending, he said.
"For decades those who favor bigger government have succeeded incrementally, by patiently layering one new program on top of another, and by pocketing incremental spending increases that build up over time," Mr. Hennessey said. "Over the next six months spending cutters are now perfectly positioned to do this in reverse."
Democrats are frustrated because they have no strategy to counter the GOP, the Politico reported last week.
"The sum and substance of our strategy can't be waiting for the other side to (mess) up," said Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY.
Democrats need wait no longer. Conservatives dissatisfied with piecemeal victories, and unhappy programs such as Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio haven't been defunded yet have torpedoed what was working for the GOP. Fifty four House Republicans voted against the CR, guaranteeing this will be the last temporary funding bill.
This sets up a showdown April 8 that probably will result in a government shutdown. Which is exactly what Democrats want. When in 1995 there was one, Democrats won the public relations battle.
A showdown is inevitable, because spending cuts of much more than $2 billion a week are required to avert fiscal catastrophe. But the place to have it, House Republican leaders think, is on the budget for the next fiscal year, after Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis, the House Budget Committee chairman, has had a chance to prepare the battlefield by offering his budget and the rationale for it.
And it matters very much who the public holds responsible for a government shutdown, because a CNN poll published last week indicates Americans oppose one, 59 percent to 36 percent.
If the GOP had stuck to the strategy laid out by its leaders, it would have been Democrats -- tired of losing ground in one short term CR after another -- who triggered a shutdown. But thanks to the kamikaze conservatives, it'll be Republicans (again) who get the blame.
In that CNN poll, respondents preferred the Republican approach to the budget over President Obama's, 47 percent to 43 percent. A government shutdown will turn that around. The kamikaze conservatives are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Which is what usually happens in banzai charges.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
