The shutdown is chugging along and the debt limit throw-down is just around the corner. Soon, all the horror stories about our debt will roll off the tongue of every right wing shouter and every journalist desperate to not be seen as biased.
Is the nation in debt? Absolutely and too much. Several things get the blame, some unfairly. Social Security gets a good piece of the blame, although even its harshest critics (for the most part) admit that it isn't an immediate problem. Social Security -- as it now exists -- has quite a few good years left. If the Congress had kept to the "grand bargain" worked out by President Reagan, Tip O'Neill and Robert Dole in the 80s, and allowed the amount of income subject to Social Security tax to rise along with average income, Social Security would be solvent well beyond anyone's ability to predict.
Medicare is a different problem. Health care costs have been increasing well above the rate of inflation for years and the situation is now becoming untenable, although the rate of increase is slowing now. Still predictions that our government is on its way to becoming a health care agency with a military is a worrisome prospect.
Speaking of our military, it is too big and too expensive. The individual services have always had insatiable appetites and far too little effort is put into restraining them. The services often appear incapable of thinking of a common good, beyond their own needs and desires. It isn't as overtly as bad as during the "Admirals' Revolt" over the favor shown the upstart Air Force in the 40s. No Air Force General has offered to sink a Navy aircraft carrier, and no Navy Admiral has offered to shoot down an Air Force strategic bomber. Now the battles are fought in Congressional Committees, among Committee staffs, and in the Offices of the Secretary of Defense. But they are no less fierce.
In addition to cost of systems and equipment, the force itself has grown far more expensive. The advent of the All-Volunteer Force led to a force that is far better paid than that which fought the Vietnam War. The force is now largely married and with families. It is older and more senior. Individual soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines stay in longer -- often for full 20-year careers. They are far better trained and many are highly competitive in the civilian work-force. The upshot is a smaller and far more expensive military than the one that went to Korea or Vietnam -- or even Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1991.
And then there are tax expenditures. What is a tax expenditure? Lets say I manufacture widgets and I am also the President of the Association of Widget Manufacturers of America (AWMA). As a manufacturer and AWMA President, I think that I need a tax break to help me fund research and development, and to give me an edge against widgets that are imported from countries who pay their workers a lot less than I do. So I send my lobbyists to Washington DC and they come back with a tax break worth $300 million. While that is great for me, it is $300 million that is not available for a bunch of other stuff our tax money pays for.
Ah, but I may point out that that $300 million is an investment in my industry. It ensures jobs in various Congressional districts. If my widgets are used in military aircraft or ships, that is even better. So, it is an investment. Okay?
There are scads of tax expenditures. There is the oil depletion allowance. There are tax breaks that allow US companies that do business overseas to sequester their overseas earnings so they aren't taxed in the US. There are personal income tax breaks for people who are able to take advantage of them; such as carried interest and stock options. One of the most wide spread tax expenditures is the home mortgage allowance.
All of these tax expenditures have their defenders. And, to some extent they are defensible as investments in industries, business start-ups, home-ownership, etc.
So what have the new breed of debt and deficit hawks done to fix these problems? You know, the people who are ready to crash the country's and the world's economy, so as to "fix" the debt.
Not a damn thing.
If they wanted to "fix" Social Security, you would think they would either raise the amount of income subject to Social Security tax to $180,000, where it should be if the terms of the Reagan/O'Neill/Dole plan were honored. Or they would propose a change to how we ensure a decent income in retirement for our seniors, and put it in front of Congress and the American People for a vote; except the last time that was tried by the White House, Congress wanted nothing to do with it and Republicans took a beating in opinion polls and electoral polls for their pains.
Moving on... What have our debt demons done about the military? Well, they have tried to address personnel problems by sequestering funds and cutting services in the least productive way possible, leaving some to wonder if they accidentally picked up Mitt Romney's proposal to get illegal aliens to self-deport by mistake. As far as equipment and high-end systems; well, we have the F-35 which has blown a hole in every spending level and development timeline it has met. It is said that in a few years, at this pace, we will have the largest defense budget in the world, and one F-35 for our trouble. But at least the F-35 doesn't suffocate its pilots (I don't think it does anyway), that honor goes to the F-22. Both aircraft are burning money like crazy and aren't in service yet. Not to be outdone the Navy is playing with the Littoral Combat Ship, which is a multi-tasking platform. That means it can be reconfigured to do all sorts of missions, but hasn't shown an ability to do any of them well. So what is Congress doing on these? Spending the money as it is asked for and even as it isn't asked for. Sometimes, Congress buys stuff the services have told them they don't want. But its good for their donors, and sometimes for jobs back home.
And lets not forget those tax expenditures. Thanks to Grover Norquist, everyone of those tax expenditures is sacrosanct. Try touching one and Grover and minions will raise a hue and cry that you are RAISING TAXES!!! They love the arguments about how tax cuts (read expenditures) are investments in jobs and that cutting them is JOB-KILLING! Curiously though, they don't see how spending on infrastructure improvements, or building a high-speed rail system, or building new schools, or investing in alternative energy systems also invests in jobs.
Finally, we should talk about MEDICARE and medical expenses. I mentioned that the rate of increase is actually starting to slow. Funny story that. About twenty years ago, President Clinton tried to reform the health system and deliver a long dreamed of Democratic Party program of universal health care for Americans. Clinton made some political mis-steps along the way and the Republicans in Congress took his lunch money. They took control of both houses of Congress and summarily killed his proposed plan; "Hillary-Care" they liked to call it after his wife, the health care task-force chairwoman.
Not to be seen as hard-hearted, and realizing that something actually did need to be done about health care, some Republicans came up with a solution that involved establishing health-care exchanges that would inject market forces into regulating health care costs, and implement a health care mandate, requiring everyone get health care coverage as a way of getting past the health insurers reluctance to cover pre-existing conditions. The concept was widely accepted by GOP leaders. It became a feature of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, and was endorsed by senior Republicans in the Senate. It got its first real-world test in Massachusetts when Governor Mitt Romney signed it into law. The resistance came, albeit mutely, from the left, who saw it as a way to blunt any drive toward a single-payer system.
Yes, I am referring to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), developed in the bowels of the Heritage Foundation and beloved of every GOP leader right up to the moment that a Democratic President chose to adopt it.
So, please keep this in mind when you listen to them bleat about our debt and deficit. They have done nothing to fix it and quite a lot to make it worse (and I didn't even get into fighting two wars on a credit card and cutting VA expenditures , thus potentially dumping those costs onto already strapped States). Now, in their fervor, they are prepared to welsh on debts that they have authorized and appropriated while prancing about as fiscal conservatives.
Conservatives aren't deadbeats and they pay their bills. They also pay their way. These bums aren't conservatives.
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