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Dan
Calabrese
Read Dan's bio and previous columns here
August 6, 2009
The Coming Campaign:
‘Stop Spending Money We Don’t Have!’
For most of its existence, this nation has been accumulating debt. And
throughout that time, the public has raised few alarms. Nothing changes
the dynamics of an issue like pushing it to the brink of full-blown
calamity, which is why the Obama Administration and the current
Democratic-controlled Congress may be unwittingly laying the groundwork
to reverse our march toward fiscal ruin.
Having watched the nation ignore reckless spending on a smaller scale
for their entire lives, President Obama and his congressional allies
seem to have inferred that we will continue to do so, no matter how much
they borrow and spend. And for the first time, I’d say there’s a pretty
good chance Washington’s drunken-sailor spenders have finally pushed
their luck to the point where the public will push back.
Why have we not done so before now? Partly because the debt seemed
manageable. Partly because it’s in our nature to ignore problems that
won’t come to fruition until some time in the future.
A
$200 billion deficit in the 1980s raised alarms, although they were
followed by surpluses in the ‘90s – achieved by a Republican Congress
and a Democratic president. Subsequent deficits under GOP control of the
White House and Congress were a source of major disappointment, but with
a war underway and no solution in sight for spiraling entitlement costs,
we assured ourselves we would figure it out eventually.
Obama’s spending, though, is unlike anything this nation has ever seen.
We used to cringe at the thought of a $100 billion stimulus to
kick-start the economy – because it was a lot of money and it rarely
made much difference. For Obama, a $100 billion is pocket change. His
$787 billion, pork-laden monstrosity – all of it borrowed – was so far
in excess of anything we’ve seen before (and equally ineffective if the
early returns are any indication), it’s almost hard to conceive of it.
Now he wants to lard his government takeover of health care on top,
which is likely to cost more than $1 trillion a year. And that’s just to
begin with, as its costs will surely escalate just as we’ve seen with
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The government has never been more out of synch with fiscal reality.
While debt mounts to unprecedented levels, Washington will spend money
on absolutely anything. It will pay for you to go see your doctor. It
will pay to save failing automobile companies. It will pay you for your
used “clunker” of a car, then turn around and pay to junk the darn
thing. It will force “stimulus” money on states whose governors don’t
even want it. This has pushed the 2009 budget deficit to an astonishing
$1.9 trillion – four times anything we ever saw prior to the
financial-sector bailouts of 2008.
This is so reckless, and so easily demonstrated as such, you have to
believe the Republican theme for the 2010 mid-term elections and the
2012 presidential campaign will be something on the order of “Stop
Spending Money We Don’t Have!” And if it isn’t, the Republican Party
might as well simply disband, as it has no worthwhile reason for
existing if it can’t get this right.
You win elections by getting those in the center to lean toward your
point of view. In 2006 and 2008, the center was sick of George W. Bush
and the Iraq War – regardless of whether they had good reasons for
feeling that way. Feel that way they did, and Democrats took advantage.
Those in the center are not avowed small-government types, but they can
be made to see that the nation’s debt-fueled spending is reaching crisis
proportions, and it shouldn’t be hard to convince them that – whatever
spending sins Republicans committed pre-Obama – Democrats are making the
problem exponentially worse, and show no interest in ceasing to do so.
There was a time when the political center would have been satisfied as
long as we raised tax rates to “pay for” our spending. They saw that as
at least “responsible,” regardless of how much Washington had to rob the
private sector of its productive capital in order to achieve it. But the
tax hikes that would be required to fund Obama’s spending would be so
massive, and so obviously destructive of economic growth, even a
centrist should be able to recognize how problematic they would be.
It’s a shame it took this to make it happen, but the stage has never
been better set for massive cuts in federal spending to become the
issue of the next several election cycles. Getting the nation behind
this long-overdue priority may be the one beneficial thing that results
from the Obama presidency. And if it doesn’t, the Republican Party
deserves its permanent oblivion, and the nation deserves the national
financial collapse it will have guaranteed.
Oh, and Happy 70th Birthday, Dad!
© 2009 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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