The Debt...and it isn’t Climate Change

By Patrick Hall

The late American Novelist Gore Vidal once observed that the human species tend to be experts at worrying about things and events (sometimes to the point of insanity), which turn out to be laggard at best.   For example, we have become overwhelmed by the media and a very select but vocal group of climate activists that, for the last five decades, have pounded us to death with cataclysmic predictions of the effects of global warming (or global cooling in the late 1960s early 70s) as the seminal threat to mankind. So-called population and climate change gurus such as Paul Ulrich and Al Gore have led us to believe that the very capacity of the human species to survive beyond the turn of the century is questionable. By the way, when I was running around in the late 1960s and '70s as a “black hippie Democratic Socialist” attending the first Earth Day celebrations, climate experts were predicting global climate disasters and the end of mankind may occur as soon as 1977.  Since that time, climate change prophets have kept moving the goalpost of a climate Armageddon. Of course, the dangers of global cooling and warming now come under the cover-their-ass phrase “Climate change.”

We all should be concerned about climate change, but not to the extent that it usurps or blinds us to real existential threats that will eventually lead to unpleasant outcomes for most Americans.  That threat or peril is and has been for some time the inability of our political class, and all of us who still vote for them, the failure to address the national debt.  We won’t do it. It is secondary, if not tertiary, importance to most politicians and the laity.  

Instead, we bury our heads in the sand and try to push it onto the next generation of Americans. Nobody, including Democrats as well as Republicans, will ever hold an honest discussion, much less propose a solution to the coming death star that is the $35 Trillion debt.  

Do we recall the Tea Party’s ominous warning about the debt in 2010? It was “only” $6 trillion at the time.  Today, even the “interest” we pay on the nation's debt (about $1 Trillion) exceeds the budgets or GDP of 47 countries.  Let me make this clear.  We are only talking about “the interest” on the debt, which is becoming increasingly hard to pay down, much less addressing the $35 Trillion and growing principal. Also, do you recall when the Clinton administration bragged about leaving us with a national surplus?  Like the previous administrations, including the Bush and Reagan administrations, this represented government accounting at its most duplicitous.  In particular, Clinton’s so-called surplus was an accounting gimmick that neither you nor I, the average taxpayers, could not do with our weekly, monthly, or yearly budgets.  It was simple for politicians like the Clintons, as well as “controlled opposition Republicans” like the Bush’s, to count items in the yearly Federal budget that were debts, as a surplus.  

 Here is an uncomplicated example of what the political class and the financial alchemists at GAO have done ad infinitum.   Say your monthly family take-home pay is $6000 per month.   Out of that salary, one would pay for food, housing, insurance, medical, car payments, utilities, entertainment, etc. Say you did not have to count your house or car payment as something you owe or as a “debt”. Remember, you also have the hidden benefit of defining or calling it a “surplus”.  Jesus, Mary, Joseph, you could keep defining these costs or debt as extra cash or monies, that could be used for all sorts of things. Also, keep in mind that none of us can print and flush money into the economy like the United States government. Sweet!

 That is what the political class (both Democrats and Republicans) have done for decades. There is no stopping them. Nor is there a political appetite to address big-ticket debt items like social security or Medicare. These two entitlements alone are the harbingers, that are killing our future. We are slowly becoming another, Greece, Venezuela, or Argentina. As the late economist Milton Friedman, warned decades ago, sometime soon, the United States Dollar, will lose its status as the world’s reserved currency. Once more, the political class, and that includes Donald Trump for all the good he has tried to do for the country, will not touch nor seek to address in any meaningful fashion the extinction-level event that are our entitlement programs, concurrent with the national debt.

Here is an unspoken sidebar.  When you hear politicians like Schumer (D-NY) or McConnell (R-Ky) couching concerns about the national debt and responding via some “Comprehensive” congressional action remember this.  Terms like Comprehensive or passing some Omnibus legislation are just “political Latin” for we're not going to do jack about it.  Most if not all legislation or bills passed by Congress with the subheading of Comprehensive means they have hidden or added on lots of junk and or political payments or programs, that we are suckered into paying for. And the debt is pushed down the road to our grandchildren or possibly those of us who are still too far from the grave to escape the coming financial and socio-economic apocalypse.

How can we fool them today?

I believe it was in 1991 when I was living in California.  I was heading back to my residence in the Imperial Valley, after dropping off my oldest child who lives in Seattle. I came across a broadcast of the Rush Limbaugh radio program. Of course, Mr. Limbaugh was a conservative radio host, or in the view of most Liberal Progressive Democrats, an unapologetic racist, and misogynist with Hitlerian tendencies, and he hurt people’s feelings.   It was the first time that I had listened to Rush, and he was discussing the weird world of government accounting, especially as it pertained to legislations passed or proposed by the geniuses (in both the Republican and Democrat Party) that feed the ongoing malpractice of the DC Political class. He opined that most, if not the majority of politicians' mode of operation or political faith statement, starts and stops with their creed of “How can we fool them today”.   Through political speak and word collage employing terms such as bi-partisan legislation, omnibus, or comprehensive prefacing a congressional bill or proposed law, the polity in DC and elsewhere primary concern is not the will of the American people, or what is good for the country. Democratic politicians like former President Obama had special contempt for a large segment of the American populace (mostly Conservative white people) whom he deemed, “privileged” and racist. People who cling to their bible and guns or in the words of many “really smart” politicians like Hillary Clinton, could be defined as a basket of deplorables. They needed to be fooled for their own good!

 Let us review.  When you hear politicians employing the word “Comprehensive” when defining their bills or legislations, it’s political Latin for lots of bad stuff within it! It is a superbly crafted legislative word stew, that will not address zip, especially anything remotely responding to the suicidal national debt.  It is another “big lie” by politicians on the left and right. It harkens back to the good old days.  That is the 1980s when politicians like former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neal (D-MA) and wiz-kids such as Presidential advisor for economic policies during the Reagan administration, David Stockman spoke of the “lock-box” that protected entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. They were flat-out lying. There was never a “lock-box” protecting these entitlements. The entitlements had been part of the general funds or federal budget for decades, and the political class could do whatever they wanted to do with the monies. The political class could define or focus tax dollars on programs and legislation they deem necessary.  

 However, gradually major and minor needs the political class could dream up quickly migrated from “necessary” to indispensable.   Of course, fifty years ago we had more people paying into the system than today.  So, the political class could easily hide their politically lucrative Ponzi scheme.