Earlier this month, the Trump White House unveiled its budget blueprint, which shifts federal spending priorities from domestic programs to national defense. The Office of Management and Budget proposed cuts of $54 billion to departments like Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and Commerce, coupled with big increases for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. The only domestic department to see any kind of increase would be Veterans Affairs.
The document was met with gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by liberals. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times tweeted, “Reading through the Trump budget, I feel as the Romans must have felt in 456 a.d. as the barbarians conquered and ushered in the dark ages.”
The Trump budget calls for spending levels that are strikingly similar to those proposed by President George W. Bush in his last budget, submitted in 2008 for fiscal year 2009. Trump wants to fund some domestic agencies at a slightly higher level and others at a lower level, but there is little variation either way. As far as I can recall, the barbarians were not storming the gates in 2008. Moreover, this is discretionary spending, meaning that programs like Medicare and Social Security are not included. Peel back the hyperbole, and what you see are cuts to domestic programs, but hardly catastrophic ones.
More broadly, if we are going to evaluate the federal budget on a moral level, we have to reckon with the fact that the distribution of benefits is deeply contrary to the principles of republican government. Current generations are, in effect, enriching themselves at the expense of future generations, which goes against the ideals embodied in the Constitution. Democrats and Republicans are both complicit in this state of affairs.
In January, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the budget deficit for this fiscal year would be $559 billion, or 2.9 percent of gross domestic product. This means the government will borrow $559 billion, to be paid back with interest by future generations.
Many of our Founding Fathers would look askance at such profligacy. The issue of the public debt was a hot topic in the early days of the republic, and they wrote extensively on it. Alexander Hamilton probably had the greatest tolerance of debt relative to the other Founders. In the Report on Public Credit, Hamilton argues that “the proper funding of the present debt, will render it a national blessing.” What he meant was that if people had faith that the debt would be repaid, then public certificates could function as a form of currency. However, Hamilton warned in the same report that recognizing the utility of the debt was a “position inviting to prodigality, and liable to dangerous abuse.” As such, he suggested that revenues from the post office serve as the basis for a “sinking fund,” to provide “the means of extinguishment” for the debt.
Thomas Jefferson took the hardest line on public debts. In a 1789 letter to James Madison, he wrote that because “the earth belongs in usufruct to the living . . . the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.” Jefferson thought this limitation bound not only individuals, but whole generations. No generation has a natural right to “contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence,” in Jefferson’s view, for doing otherwise would unjustly burden the next generation.
Madison responded to Jefferson that there had to be exceptions to this rule—for “improvements made by the dead form a charge against the living who take the benefit of them.” In Madison’s view, “debts may be incurred for purposes which interest the unborn, as well as the living.” Included among these are “debts for repelling a conquest, the evils of which descend through many generations.” In general, Madison thought that “equity” and “mutual good” required that the debits against the living should not be exceeded by contributions made by the dead.
Madison’s views on the debt shifted over the years, but the opinion he expressed to Jefferson in this letter is consistent with the preamble to the Constitution, which explicitly demarcates future generations as part of civil society. One purpose of our governing charter is “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Debts that are imposed upon the next generation should be incurred for the purpose of securing the blessings of liberty to them. To this, we may add that because future generations will likely be better off than current ones, it is admissible to incur debts to ameliorate the burdens faced by citizens on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, provided that such efforts are not wasteful.
By this standard, our federal budget is a reprehensible failure. No doubt, the federal government does plenty of things that interest future generations, but this explains at most a fraction of our annual shortfall. The preponderance of our deficit is due to purely political considerations. Namely, it is easier for politicians to win reelection if they distribute government benefits to voters that are in excess of tax burdens. The gap can safely be pushed off to future generations because they are not yet eligible to vote.
Put another way, it is not like the United States could not close this year’s $559 billion deficit. It chooses not to because doing so is inconvenient. Some combination of tax increases and spending cuts could be implemented to fill the hole, but that would invariably offend some essential political constituency, who would rebuke elected officials in the next election. It is much easier to shift the burden to those who will not begin voting until current officeholders are long gone.
Does this mean the government has a moral obligation to balance the budget? No. Deficits can have positive economic effects in certain circumstances. But there is an obligation to govern for the general welfare, broadly conceived to include a regard for future generations. That means keeping deficits relatively under control, either by cutting wasteful spending or increasing taxes to pay for necessary services. Our government simply does not do that.
So as we gear up for yet another debate on the merits of this or that budgetary line item, it is proper to acknowledge our miserable place in the grand scheme of things. Our current fiscal situation runs contrary to the principles upon which our country was founded, and we should not delude ourselves into thinking that one side of the present divide is any better than the other.
Jay Cost is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
