Unfortunately, Nobody Actually Cares About the Debt
Of the 535 combined members of the House and Senate, how many actually care about the national debt? One hundred? Fifty? Less than that? Of those who actually care, how many have proposed a plan to actually deal with it? Roughly, none.
Yes, the good old days of trillion dollar deficits are back in Washington and nobody could be bothered while President Trump announced on Monday that he had reached a compromise (so therefore it must be good, right?) with Congressional leaders to avert a debt ceiling showdown.
Over the years Democrats have condemned Republicans for running high deficits all to look away during the Obama years. Similarly, Republicans who spent years going after Obama on the debt did absolutely nothing with two years of total control of government to bring the nation’s finances under control. It seems as if our political overlords view the debt as a political mallet to hit their opponents over the head with, but who do not care about the issue.
Why this is, is anyone guess. Maybe it’s because nobody believes it’s a problem, because we’re the United States, not Greece. Maybe because, politicians would rather pontificate about other things because voters respond better to emotional arguments and stories rather than lectures accompanied by pie charts, bar graphs, and projected spending graphs. Maybe, it’s political convenient to scaremonger about entitlement reform, despite mandatory spending taking up nearly two-thirds of the budget, while also promising free everything. It is much easier to make an ad claiming your opponent wants to kill grandma than it is to actually solve the problem. Maybe it’s because politicians know the voters don’t want to elect Judge Smails from Caddyshack. “You’ll get nothing and like it” doesn’t sell very well in an age where voters want to know how politicians will fix every problem in their lives.
Trump ran for office, promising not to do entitlement reform. The Republican Congress didn’t push him on this once he was inaugurated, and some in the conservative media have moved on. Republicans did not couple the tax cuts with spending cuts. Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, Democrats are campaigning across the country promising free this and free that and claiming it will all be funded by taxes on the rich or on Wall Street (Spoiler Alert: It Won’t). Presidents Bush and Obama both expanded the government’s mandatory spending obligations and both pushed economic stimulus packages. The CBO estimates that within the decade, interest payments alone could reach up to $900 billion, which is $150 billion more than the White House requested for the Pentagon’s FY2020 budget.
When it comes time to pay the piper, all will say they rang the alarm bells, but when push came to shove, nobody actually did anything about it.
