ANALYSIS: The Bottom Line in D.C. is This: Fix the Bottom Line

(Newsroom America) – As congressional leaders and the White House continued Saturday to spar over competing debt reduction plans that would also authorize the government additional borrowing authority for various lengths of time, the most important matter seems to have gotten lost in the heat of battle. But that’s par for the course in a Washington long paralyzed by rank partisanship, where true statesmanship is long a thing of the past and few care to see past the next election cycle.

The real issue in this political fight isn’t whether or not the government should be permitted to borrow more money (it should be allowed, at least for now) or for how long (it should at least be extended beyond the next election), but rather how we got into this mess in the first place.

And the answer to that is simple: Washington spends too much money. Period. And worse, that spending has gotten the most out of control just since the beginning of the 21st century.

Whether it was George W. Bush trying to couch his huge increases in spending as necessary for bolstering defense and national security in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, or whether it’s been President Barack Obama’s so-called “stimulus” packages and other “recovery” measures, the nation’s debt has skyrocketed, more than doubling since the turn of the century.

The time for pointing fingers is over because, quite frankly, both sides are to blame.

And as long as each continues to choose constituency politics over policies that are healthy and good for the nation as a whole, as long as each tries to use the taxpayer – who is rapidly becoming an endangered species – to buy the loyalty of others with perks, benefits and largess that the nation simply can no longer afford, then nothing will change in Washington.

Moreover, fixing our bottom line will continue to be an elusive goal, when clearly – since we’re talking about raising a debt ceiling that is already at more than $14 trillion - getting spending under control should be our leaders’ number one goal.

I said earlier that any debt deal now should include an increase in the ceiling, and I said that because right now, considering the dire situation our leaders have put the country in, it’s got to be done. But that should be the last time. From here on out, the goal should be to find a way to reduce federal outlays and therefore eliminate the need to ever have to increase the nation’s debt. But doing that will require statesmanship, not politics.

For starters, Democrats have got to come off the position that federal entitlements – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid – are off-limits. Taken together, these three entitlements alone will swallow the federal budget whole in the coming years, and we simply cannot afford them anymore, at least in the form they are in. Smarter people than me have said the best way to relieve the government of this obligation is to privatize these benefits programs, perhaps through some sort of public-private partnership so Uncle Sam can at least keep track of them. But unless or until these programs are operated in a way that can generate profits for shareholders while still providing a fair, base set of benefits to recipients, then these programs will eventually provide little-to-nothing for anyone because we won’t be able to pay enough in taxes to support them. Had lawmakers over the years better managed these funds, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this mess, but, you know how that story went. Plus, in the event the government can’t pay its bills someday, a private benefits program wouldn’t necessarily be affected.

Republicans, meanwhile, need to get off the position that Americans pay too little in taxes. It’s not that taxes need to be raised, per se; it’s just that too few of us pay taxes as it is. That needs to change. Everyone uses streets and highways; we are all protected by the same military; all of us rely on the same Post Office. In short, we all use or rely on the same services the federal government is constitutionally obligated to provide, but not all of us pay for them. In fact, most income taxes are shouldered by the few, the proud and the wealthy, who are essentially being punished by a “progressive” income tax system because they are successful. That’s because, over the years, our leaders have used the tax code to win votes and influence people. That has to change. Income taxes were first levied to help the government provide services, and it was a tax that was levied against all earners. It should be that way again.

Finally, the Tea Party faction is right when it insists that part of this spending solution must be to impose a constitutional limitation on Congress’ ability to spend. By adopting a balanced budget amendment that limits lawmakers’ ability to spend more than the government collects in revenue, we eliminate the need for debates over raising a debt ceiling that is already more than our entire annual GDP. How proud our lawmakers must be to have botched their fiscal stewardship of our country so badly that we have to compel them to quit spending money we don’t have. They obviously don’t have the ability to do this themselves so an amendment to the Constitution requiring them to do so becomes necessary.

There are other issues – corporate tax rates, regulatory burdens, unfunded mandates to the states – that also need to be addressed, so that we can take the governor off the world’s most powerful economic engine. But in the short term these are changes that can be made now to get the ball rolling.

This ridiculous political posturing over how much to raise an already unsustainable level of debt while relegating ways to actually reduce spending in the first place to second-class status is obscene. Lawmakers from both parties and the White House share equal blame and both are equally responsible for torpedoing our economic ship of state.

There is an expression that says, “Lead, follow or get out of the way.” Lawmakers not up to this this very monumental task should take heed.

© 2011 Newsroom America.

Contact Jon E. Dougherty

Newsroom America Twitter Feed