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Jewish World Review
Oct. 23, 2013/ 19 Mar-Cheshvan, 5774
Next up: Entitlements threaten to shut down U.S. future
By
Jay Ambrose
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
After the 2008 financial crisis, many people suffered, but some didn't. There were culpable CEOs who luxuriated as bailouts helped them weather the storm, and some said to arrest them, try them, make them pay. It sometimes seemed unimportant to the vengeful whether there had been an actual crime or not.
But what about the politicians who helped create that maelstrom through the furthering of inane mortgage and other policies and have done far worse? They have been creating a major public debt that could reduce our continental grandeur to an island of distress. How about trying them and devising a punishment fit for their misdeeds? Would that be the ticket or what?
No, please, it would not be. It's not punishment we need but rectification. Here is what we should do: Recognize how diligently they have worked for years and years to get us in this ungodly mess and demand better -- much, much better. Of course, these are frequently moral pretenders who react furiously at the mere suggestion they were ever wrong. But what's at stake is huge and there are compromise solutions. They need finally to admit the true evil is a failure to refashion entitlement programs that will otherwise undo themselves.
Restructuring Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid -- and doing at least something about the new entitlement called Obamacare -- is crucial. Leave them alone and their cost in another 10 years will be enough to take up half the budget. The debt is at $17 trillion now, up more than $6 trillion since President Barack Obama took office, and could easily go up another $7 trillion in that 10 years as we try to sustain these programs at the heart of our fiscal peril.
When I say "peril," I mean peril. If foreign borrowers hiked interest rates, we would have calamity on our hands. Debt of the magnitude we are looking at will surely slow our economic growth, meaning occupational and other opportunities for an increasing population would be vastly diminished. We would likely not even be generating enough money to pay debt interest and sustain other essential programs we now take for granted. The people who would have to deal with the worst of it are the generations lined up behind us. Good luck, young'uns.
Despite all of this, here's what you find on the front page of the Oct. 21 Wall Street Journal: a story saying some liberal Democrats don't want to negotiate entitlement reforms. They don't even want to consider something President Barack Obama came up with, some less-than-astonishing cost adjustments in Social Security and Medicare. They have not evolved one iota from the kind of pure, unadulterated demagoguery of the past that got us where we are today. Every time someone tried to do something to strengthen entitlements by rendering them affordable, these political critics barked that they were thereby forcing old people to eat dog food to survive.
What Democrats want is to save the day by raising taxes a trillion dollars, which the Republicans won't do and should not do. This solution would have many of the same economy-impeding effects as the debt itself and would be a temporary answer as ever bigger government ever more encapsulated our lives.
But there's negotiating room here. We do need tax reform -- reduced corporate rates, fewer loopholes for all -- as a means of more revenue along with greater growth. We also need fewer regulations of the kinds now smothering our economy. We need immigration reform that keeps doors open to entrepreneurial talents while affording less admittance to those most likely to fail and suffer. We need significant budget cuts.
Maybe, just maybe, the more reasonable Democrats and the more reasonable Republicans will thwart these regressive progressives wanting to shut down something more than the government. They want to shut down our future. And considering all the possibilities of the moment -- not least of them an energy boom -- what a future it could be if they got out of the way.
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.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
10/09/13: Obama could try leading for a change
09/25/13: The harm of ObamaCare does not justify a shutdown
09/18/13: Ethanol push makes frighteningly little sense
09/11/13: In Syria debate, will Obama defeat himself?
08/21/13: Frisk constitutionally, but frisk
08/14/13: Obama delivers a blow to minority students
08/07/13: Can Amazon's Bezos save Washington Post?
07/24/13: Detroit becomes a valuable warning
07/17/13: The profiling of George Zimmerman
07/10/13: Obama says Earth warm, may think it's flat
07/03/13: Senate immigration bill borders on reckless
06/26/13: Fake 'hero' must be caught and tried
06/19/13: With crime, control works --- just not the one considered the magical solution
06/12/13: What happened to the anti-Bush? Reality happened
06/05/13: Obama crosses bridge before coming to it
05/29/13: Biting the Apple: Nothing infuriates neo-socialist curmudgeons more than free enterprise of the vigorous, corporate kind expanding the reach of our lives
05/22/13: Evidence tells us the administrative state can be grotesquely unfair, unconstitutional, self-contradictory, unspeakably autocratically intrusive, stupid and morally repulsive
05/15/13: It's raining cats, dogs and scandals
05/08/13: Grads, heed Jefferson, not Obama
05/01/13: Letting planes fly on time
04/24/13: How about having a poetry century?
03/28/13: TV news can give you the blues
03/20/13: We're upside down and debt crash is coming
03/13/13: Stock market is downright perky. Blame the corporations
03/06/13: Bloomberg rivals Carrie Nation
02/27/13: The Wily One is proving in polls that it's no toughie to fool lots of people most of the time
02/20/13: On Obama, swans, goulash and invisibility
02/13/13: Drones and hypocrisy
01/30/13: The Nixonian Obama
01/23/13: Is Obama making JFK-style mistakes?
01/02/13: Kerry nomination emblematic of woes coming
12/26/12: Hollywood beats Harvard in history?
12/12/12: Immigration issues solve themselves
12/06/12: Durbin's deficiency
11/29/12: Man of the century
11/21/12: A big scandal coming?
11/14/12: U.S. should follow the Swedish path
11/07/12: Hanging from a poll
• 10/31/12: A dream that wouldn't come true
• 10/29/12: When the 'kooks' and 'racists' turn out to be your ideological allies
• 10/24/12: The pettiness refuge
• 10/18/12: An interruption that tells a bigger tale
• 10/17/12: A recovery that wasn't
• 10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
• 10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
• 08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
• 08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
• 08/01/12: Combatting free speech
• 07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
• 07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
• 07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
• 07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
• 07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
• 07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
• 07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
• 06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
• 06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
• 06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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