election

The Presidential election of 1988 between Bill Clinton and Bush Sr was typical for me, in that I waited right up until the end, to make my decision and I remember clearly the deciding factor was when Clinton said, welfare should be a helping hand not a way of life. With that he got my vote. As I look back on that statement, I realize that it is the essence of my entire view of government. Unlike Reagan who said government is the problem, I say that government is the problem sometimes and sometimes the government is the solution. It is the reach of government that explains the differences between liberal and conservative. As parents we know that we can do too much for our children and we can do too little and most of the time it is our love that keeps us from going overboard, one way or the other. We cannot depend on love from government to guide us. We must depend on our common sense but our common sense has been distorted by our politics. Ideologues on both sides can no longer be trusted to make logical decisions. Our two parties are like a married couple on the road to divorce. They have made up their minds and spend their time talking past each other. For the next nine months they will do nothing as they await a signal from the voters in November.
On a recent news show the topic of good government was brought up and the speaker pointed out the good that Social Security and Medicare have done in helping seniors. Everyone agreed but no one pointed out that these two programs are the cause of our long term debt problems, which if left unchecked, will turn us into Greece. The point here is that sometimes a good government program can grow into a problem. Similar things are happening in private and public pension plans in that they started out with good intentions and grew into unexpected consequences. The potential problems we see in our various pensions are being played out in Greece and other Southern European countries. For those who think that we are not like Greece, I ask you, if we cut all pensions by 22% like Greece is having to do, would we have riots in the streets. Will we see the writing on the wall or will our ideological vision blind us to the inevitable train wreck. Will we continue to place party above country and refuse to raise taxes and cut spending? It is not that our elected officials do not know what to do, as this was pointed out to them in the Boles/Simpson report. It laid out a road map to solve the long term debt problems but once again ideology raised its ugly head. Winning next year’s election is far more important than solving the debt problem.
Let’s first tackle the problem of raising taxes. One of the historical signs of a nation heading for trouble, is when the gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening, as has happened here and has been going on for 50 years. Our problem has been exacerbated by corruption of government by money and influence. Both the Tea Party and the Wall Street Protestors understand this and are fed up. The first step should be total and immediate disclosure of all political donations. Reports can be updated daily on the Internet. Secondly the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire and this will bring in enough money to cover one-third of this year’s deficit.
On the spending side we much look to entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid). We can seriously impact these programs with changes in the age of eligibility and means testing.
Taking these steps will be the start of a long journey that will ultimately get us back on a fiscally responsible path but this is unlikely until after the election.