Rare News Desk
Budgets, in the simplest terms, are made up of three things: priorities, choices and commitment.
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Whether you are at your kitchen table staring at your household obligations or in Washington dealing with incomprehensibly large numbers, the same basic challenges apply to all budget making.
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Priorities
President Obama’s latest weekly address was aptly titled, “Passing a budget that reflects our priorities.” How our country chooses to spend our money reflects our values and priorities.
Unfortunately, Washington has been unable to create a budget since 2009. Both the right and the left are unable to come to a consensus of our priorities in order to make a budget. This leaves the country’s finances in a precarious position, unsure about making good on our obligations and unable to make adequate adjustments when necessary.
Let’s assume that conservatives share President Obama’s goal of “growing our economy, creating good jobs, strengthening security and opportunity for the middle class.” The parties quickly diverge, however, when you discuss how to achieve these goals.
Liberals believe these goals are achieved through the redistribution of wealth via taxation, entitlement spending and “investment,” a fancy word for more government spending. The problem with this philosophy is that government doesn’t create wealth and it shouldn’t be in the business of picking economic winners and losers. Money is better served in the hands of the individuals who earned it so they can spend it, invest it or donate it as they wish.
The best way to achieve economic growth is to allow people who earn money to keep it and then have the freedom to choose how to spend it freely. Liberals – assuming they know what’s best – do not like this because it means that government, and therefore politicians, wield less power over you.
Choices
The country has choices when it comes to our budget and its priorities. While the long-term debt obligations must be fulfilled, the ever-increasing rate at which the U.S. currently accrues debt cannot exist forever unless we’ve resigned ourselves to a future that resembles Europe.
By 2045, the U.S. will spend 100 percent of our revenue on just three entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This says that our nation’s number one priority is keeping people dependent the government. You can forget other government responsibilities like national defense, border security, education, infrastructure and various entitlements like food stamps.
What’s more, if the U.S. continues on its current spending path, the amount of federal debt held by the public will reach 100 percent of our GDP by 2038. Taxpayers will be burdened paying back obligations of the past, rather than focusing on the growth of the future. We have chosen to tie an anchor around our own necks, yet we foolishly believe we could still swim the English Channel.
Commitment
A budget – with proper choices made and priorities in place – means nothing without a commitment to it. The problem in Washington is two-fold: not only are they incapable of sticking to a budget but they’ve resigned us to an ever-growing budget that we cannot afford.
If you knew you would earn approximately $100,000 a year, every year for the next ten years, you would have to budget accordingly. But in Washington, even if the federal government continues to take in $2.8 trillion every year (a record high estimate), they will spend $3.6 trillion this year, with the number expected to increase every year for the next decade. It simply doesn’t add up. Even conservative plans only slow the rate of spending, rather than achieve a balanced budget.
Washington is condemning younger Americans to an unsustainable future.
Liberals will try to convince you that the answer is more taxation. “Tax the rich,” they say. That answer, however, ignores reality. We could confiscate all of the income from every rich person in America, along with the wealth of every millionaire and the profits of the top Fortune 500 corporations, and we would still be unable to fund our government for an entire year.
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Unfortunately there’s no appetite in Washington to make the kind of changes necessary to set a budget that reflects our priorities. The hard choices haven’t been made and won’t be made until we are forced to make them, at which point it may be too late.
The American people must impress upon Washington the importance of responsible budget making, and have them make a commitment to the American people and to the future generations.
