Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels came up with the best description of the fiscal crisis the country faces during his speech at CPAC. He called it the “new red menace.” The red he’s talking about, of course, isn’t the communist menace we fought for over 40 years in the Cold War, but instead the ocean of red ink our national debt continues to accumlate as the federal government remains on a spending spree with no end in sight.
Most know that we’re past the “we can’t do this forever” stage of spending and into the “we can’t do this anymore” stage of fiscal difficulty. There is no more road down which the can can be kicked. Yet the budget submitted by the president to Congress today seems to be one which ignores the new reality.
It is a a 3.8 trillion dollar budget monster marked by 1.6 trillion in borrowing. In a conference call today for bloggers and reporters, Rep. Paul Ryan caracterized it as a budget that “borrows too much, spends too much and taxes too much.”
The spending in the budget amounts to 25.3% of the GDP, which Ryan claims is the highest since WWII. Additionally, it adds $1.6 trillion in taxes which will effect “families, small businesses and job creators” per Ryan. Finally, it borrows $1.6 trillion for the FY 2012 budget – the third straight trillion dollar plus deficit in a row. And the spending levels it creates will add $13 trillion to the debt in a decade, or as Ryan said, “it will double the debt in 5 years and triple it in 10”.
Pushing aside the rhetoric that calls spending “investments” and reductions in planned spending “cuts”, the numbers Ryan lays out are the reality of passing such a budget.
Ryan saw nothing to like about the President’s budget noting that the President had apparently rejected “all the money saving ideas from the fiscal commission” that he had organized and upon which Ryan had served. In fact, Ryan said, “it would be better for our nation if we did nothing instead of passing this budget”.
That said, the House GOP still hasn’t put forward its version of the budget yet, but given Rep. Ryan’s comments, one must sincerely hope that it isn’t something that is only slightly better than the Obama budget. If it is and it relies heavily on deficit spending and more borrowing, that new majority isn’t going to much more popular than was the old one.
People appear to want action on spending and they want it now – not ten years down the road. Of course the other side of that coin is people are generally for less spending and smaller government in a general way unless the cuts in spending or government services effect them. This is the tight-rope Republicans have to walk. But for the first time in decades there seems to be an understanding and an acceptance by the public at large that everyone is going to have to sacrifice. So while the public may scream and holler a bit they’re more likely now than ever before to go along with the cuts – even grudgingly – than they have been in the past.
But we won’t know how the public will react unless real cuts are made. That, of course, is up to the politicians and a thing called political will – the will to make tough and unpopular decisons even if they may make you vulnerable the next election cycle.
It is something, unfortunately, that has been in very short supply in Washington DC for years. Let’s hope the new GOP majority in the House has the will to stem the tide of the new red menace.
