The Budget Mess -- And a Solution

It's easy to see how we got into this mess by looking back the road we traveled. In the 1950s the budget was about half Defense and half everything else. So-called entitlements and yearly deficits were small. We had funds to support a robust military, to build infrastructure, and to do the things that make a great nation great.

Look at today's budget. Defense and other discretionary items have been squeezed to half the budget, crowded out by three malignant tumors -- Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security -- which together make up half the budget. Addicted to these cancers, we encourage their growth and instead cut away at the healthy tissue such as defense. We are broke, have buried our children in debt, and can no longer maintain our infrastructure -- much less build anything new.

Now swells the chorus, "But those programs are the safety net". Call them what you will, but a safety net that gobbles half the national budget is a destructive monster. Entitlements have become irreversible, creating large voting blocks that guarantee their perpetuation. Roosevelt planted the seeds in the 1930s despite strong opposition from the Supreme Court, and the cancer has grown. We have created the beast and are powerless to stop feeding it.

We demand new entitlements for newly-discovered rights. A bumper sticker reads: "Medical Care is a Human Right". But is it? Our Founding Fathers were sicker than we are, died earlier, and paid their doctors' bills. But they must have been made of sterner stuff, because medical care escaped the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Soon, I guess, we will invent the rights to cheap gasoline and free internet access.

Alexander Tytler once wrote, "A democracy... can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury." We have arrived, and our votes match our slogans: "Balance the budget, but hands off my Medicare"... Cut spending, but don't touch my Social Security."

Discussing last month's budget agreement, a politician noted that Medicare and Social Security were off limits because they were "on autopilot". They are indeed, and the autopilot is flying them to insolvency in a diving spiral. The budget agreement protects these porkers, so only half the budget is on the chopping block. And the tough decisions await even on this half. The financial world saw through this charade, with our credit rating downgraded and the Dow shedding 600 points the day after it was signed.

Politicians refuse to address serious entitlement reform, the Democrats because it's their lifeblood, Republicans because they are petrified of voter reaction. Arch-conservative Michele Bachmann opened a Fox interview by assuring her viewers that her budget plan would affect no one currently receiving Medicare or Social Security. So much for backbone.

But there's hope -- if both parties will quit their games, stiffen their spines, and present a united front. I believe Republicans would agree to tax increases if the Democrats would agree to serious entitlement cuts, both for present and future beneficiaries. It would take a

national TV appearance by the President. Flanked by the leaders of both parties, he would state that national survival is on the line and that all agree upon the required medicine, as bitter as it might seem. The American public, I think, would rise to the occasion, as it has before in times of crisis.