I received a special report from the Brookings Institute this week about what Congress needs to do in order to bring serious and immediate reform to the financial situation of our country. This, and all other measures and indicators show that the problem we face is not a false dilemma, but an ever growing and looming threat to the real security and future of our country. We are on a course to financial insolvency. This course can, and must be changed. However, doing so is politically not a good move.
I will quote just a few excerpts from the report:
"The United States is facing a looming fiscal imbalance brought on by the aging of the population and rapidly rising health care costs. And while the credit crisis and recession are understandably of top concern to policymakers at the moment, the long-run fiscal outlook, seemingly deteriorating further day by day, cannot be ignored.
Unfortunately, the current political environment creates strong disincentives for individual politicians to tackle the tough choices required to put our fiscal house back in order. An appointed commission could offer an alternative mechanism through which to address these thorny but critical issues by undertaking the heavy lifting of developing options and building the political consensus necessary to enact legislation. As evidence of the popularity of this idea, over a dozen bills were introduced in the 110th Congress that would have created commissions to find politically and fiscally acceptable solutions for reforming entitlements, taxes, the budgeting process, or some combination of the three. This paper reviews some of the recent history of appointed commissions and discusses the issues surrounding their potential role in long-term federal budgeting..."
The report continues:
"Unlike the Social Security crisis, the long-term budget problem is neither imminent nor obvious to the general public. Furthermore, the costs of failing to enact sustainable fiscal policies appear distant and vague to many elected officials, while the costs to their electoral success are obvious and quite immediate, making it more convenient to simply ignore the problem. And while the closing or downsizing of military facilities was politically unpalatable for Congressional members, the process itself was well understood. In contrast, no consensus exists on the potential solution to restraining health care costs, the main underlying cause of the long-term fiscal gap.
This does not mean that a commission cannot play a role in the resolution of the long-term budget problem. Indeed, given Congress’ failure to act and the political unpopularity of any likely solution, a commission may be the only viable way to address the problem...."
The report concludes:
"Given the current political environment, the likelihood that the Administration or the Congress will undertake long-term budget reform in a serious way seems dismally low. So while the success of a commission is by no means guaranteed, and while it may not be the ideal mechanism for bringing about fiscal sustainability, the alternative – political paralysis – is far worse. By developing policy options and providing political shelter for those who participate, a commission offers a real chance to, at the very least, begin to tackle the issue of closing the long-term fiscal gap."
This IS an issue we can avoid. This IS an issue that we can do something about. We could have avoided the current economic meltdown by tightening regulations on the mortgage industry. Some even say we could have avoided 9/11. However, we didn't avoid either of these - the two most tragic events to hit our country in more than half a century. Are we going to learn from these two tragedies and take action now to avoid the perfect storm we are creating or will we blindly carry on thinking that all is well and do nothing but half measures that pretend to address the issue? We will be the only ones to blame if we don't. The consequences of inaction will reshape our world and make the Great Depression look like a summer picnic. We can't afford to not say, "We can't afford it." We can't afford inaction or the time will come when we won't be able to afford anything. We depend on it and our children depend on it.
Ask your representatives to support H.R.1557 and S.276. It is the least we can do.
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