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Jewish World Review March 2, 2012/ 8 Adar, 5772 Forget kids --- today's debt hurts adults By Deroy Murdock
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Fiscal conservatives unwittingly sabotage themselves by invoking "the children" when explaining the dangers of America's ballooning national debt. They should spend lots more time discussing how federal red ink harms adults today.
Tying debt reduction to parenting causes two problems:
First, if America's children will pay off the national debt, why sweat it now? Washington's spendaholics will embrace any available excuse to keep federal spending grinding onward. If the debt will vex the kids, it clearly needs no attention for another decade, maybe two. So, until then, PARTY!
Second, millions of American adults lack children. Some have not had them. Others don't want them. While speeches about "the children" may play moms and dads like fiddles, they barely pluck the heartstrings of the childless.
Free-marketeers, thus, should add a badly needed note of urgency to their overtures on the national debt. Current and previous federal borrowing hurts American adults -- and this entire economy -- right now, well before little Johnny and Sally turn 21, find jobs and start signing the tab for Washington's endless fiscal happy hour.
For now, the good times are rolling.
After the Bush-Rove administration's fiscal bacchanal, the gross national debt was $10.6 trillion when President Barack Obama took office. Today, that figure is $15.4 trillion -- and climbing. It likely will crash through today's $16.4 trillion debt ceiling in mid-October, weeks before the November election. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the debt will total $21.7 trillion in 2022.
Servicing this debt will be a massive national enterprise. Net interest payments will soar from $224 billion to $624 billion in 2022 alone. Over the next 10 years, the CBO projects that interest to bondholders will cost $4.25 trillion. This is nearly double the expected budget for Obamacare.
"This debt cloud over our economy is depressing growth right now," said Alabama's Jeff Sessions, the U.S. Senate Budget Committee's top Republican. Sessions cites economists Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard. They determined that advanced nations with gross debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent experience 1 percent to 2 percent lower median growth rates. Slower growth means fewer jobs, lower incomes and grimmer people. America's debt/GDP ratio equals 105 percent today, well within that danger zone. Obama's budget keeps that figure above 102 percent through 2022.
"The nation's debt is leading to higher costs for businesses and American households to obtain long-term credit," states a May 2011 report by Sessions' budget analysts. "Longer-term interest rates would be even lower today, and more stimulating of economic activity, if today's deficit and government debt were lower."
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also sees the national debt menacing today's adults. "Expectations of large and increasing deficits in the future could inhibit current household and business spending," he said in October 2010, "for example, by reducing confidence in the longer-term prospects for the economy or by increasing uncertainty about future tax burdens and government spending -- and thus restrain the recovery."
Washington will not get serious about any of this until Democrats grow up.
Obama's deficit projections exceed $575 billion every year through 2022. Even after proposing a $1.9 trillion tax hike, he never comes close to balancing the budget.
When House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner how he would cure this debt headache, Geithner sniffed: "We're not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don't like yours."
House Republicans last year passed Ryan's sober, debt-curbing budget. The Democratic Senate then sandbagged it.
As for 2012, "We don't need to bring a budget to the floor this year," declared Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Why start now? In serial violation of the Congressional Budget Act, the Democratic Senate last passed a budget on April 29, 2009.
Debt-weary Americans who worry about "the children" should start fretting about Washington's infantile Democrats.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Comment by clicking here. Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
• 02/24/12: Dems arise against Obamacare • 02/17/12: The voting dead are understated • 02/10/12: Holder takes on 'racist' photo-ID cards: Prejudice is widespread --- even Obama backed them • 02/03/12: On tax plans, Gingrich trumps Romney • 01/27/12: Photo IDs can protect elections, let dead rest • 01/20/12: Romney runs hot and cold on global warming • 01/13/12: Economic freedom declines in U.S. • 01/06/12: Time to yank off Mitt's mask • 12/23/11: Boehner hands Dems a gift • 12/15/11: The U.S. could learn much from Hong Kong • 12/09/11:$687 billion is available to Congress free of strings • 12/02/11: Obama criticizes Wall Street but takes money from it • 11/18/11: Puerto Rico shows Washington the way • 11/11/11: Take heed, America: In Ohio even left-wing unionists voted to repeal ObamaCare • 10/28/11: Thanks, Netanyahu, for surge of hardened terrorists • 10/24/11:The Obama Spend-O-Rama • 10/17/11: Cain stakes his viable claim just by showing up • 10/07/11: Green jobs are national scandal • 10/04/11: Obama proudly declares class war • 09/23/11: Obama wrong about ‘Do-Nothing’ Congress • 09/16/11: Obama needs Ryan's vision on jobs • 09/09/11: Reaganomics trounces Obamanomics • 09/02/11: Labor leaders to Obama: Stop killing jobs • 08/26/11: Pro-market Perry vaults over Romney in GOP race • 08/19/11: Some rich Americans will not rest until Washington boosts their taxes • 08/12/11: Hope, change and free birth control for all • 08/05/11: Debt deal does virtually nothing • 07/21/11: Dems pro-choice on abortion but little else • 07/15/11: Debt deception: If only Dems were honest and GOPers were courageous • 07/08/11: Congress' war on light bulb blows up
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