In 2009, President Obama promised to cut the deficit in half over ten years. Instead it tripled under his watch, due to his signing bills as president that he personally pushed for and voted for back when he served in Congress. Now, the tea party movement has managed to push fiscal responsibility and cutting the deficit into the public eye. Even President Obama is talking about deficit and debt reduction once more.
Congress recently worked out a deal that supposedly cut almost $40 billion in federal spending, but in actuality cut around $350 million, less than a tenth of what was announced. This new budget deal even includes increased spending such as $6.5 billion for high speed rail, down from an $8 billion request by the president. That kind of work shows there’s no will for real cuts in Congress.
To show that they have a genuine desire to take real action, Congress has to step up with a solid, aggressive plan to deal with the problem, and here’s what I believe they must do:
1) Start at home with their own salaries, benefits and staff size. They have to show they personally will sacrifice, slashing their own budget deeply. Before Congress can ask anyone else to sacrifice, they have to show they will, and make it public and transparent. Congressmen should ask themselves if every expense they have would seem reasonable to a citizen asked to agree to spending cuts that affect them in the federal budget.
2) No new spending. Outside of some major emergency or crisis, all new spending must immediately freeze. That means no new high speed rail budget, no gradually implemented health insurance bill, nothing. Congress has to draw a line and say, “From here on out, we do not spend on anything new, not even bills that were passed before and take effect in the future. Nothing, until we get this under control.”
3) There are no sacred cows; nothing is immune to cuts, nothing. Military, Social Security, it doesn’t matter. It all has to face cuts and reduction because we absolutely cannot keep spending like this. This has to be agreed to up front and publicly: everything is on the table, and everything will be examined.
4) Look at the budget. All the spending that was added in good times, all of the things that you’d spend money on only when you had a good revenue flow, cut. Like a family that gives up movie night and eating out once a week when dad loses his job, Congress has to treat this like a real crisis and cut back things that may be nice, but aren’t critical. That means spending such as Radio America, the National Endowment for the Arts, “faith based” initiatives, public broadcasting and so on. Cut them or eliminate them all.
5) Look through everything and eliminate all duplication, redundancy and waste. Every single department should be closely audited and cut back. That means hard times for the agencies, cutbacks on everyone and a lot of federal workers losing their jobs. That’s rough, but right now, it has to be done. Nobody said this was going to come without a cost.
6) Realize that you’re out of a job at the end of your term. Congressmen have to work with the assumption that what they’re going to have to do will enrage many voters, but it has to be done and once its over, then someone else can take the job. In America, “politician” isn’t supposed to be a career anyway, just a temporary service to the citizens of the United States.
Once these things are done, once real cuts are put in place and real reduction in spending happens – not just one year, but permanently – then and only then can Congress consider tax increases. Because if they’re done in reverse, then the cuts will just never, ever happen. Just ask President Ronald Reagan who made a deal with then-Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill to do just that, and the Democrats lied through their grinning teeth.
The alternative is economic collapse, and likely out of that a new regime that is less interested in liberty than giving people what they say they want. That didn’t work out so well for the Germans. I don’t have confidence we’ll ever manage to elect a congress that will do what has to be done, and if we do, not in time to stave off real disaster. But, this is the recipe for pulling it off. The first three points the present congress could take up immediately, with almost no political cost. The rest get a bit tougher, which is why it ends with number six.
But really, Mr. and Mistress Representative and Senator, which is better: your continued political power, or the future of the nation? Who were you elected to serve, yourself, or the people who elected you to represent them? Did you run for office to gain power and money, or to work for the betterment of the United States and your constituents, in particular?
The answer to that question is something every congressman should be facing today, and every one that cannot answer correctly needs to be shown the door, no matter how powerful they are and what they’ve done in the past.
