So, the president is going to be talking about debt and the deficit on Wednesday. If I were he, these are the things I would say:
- Current and projected levels of debt, and of deficit spending, are this generation's Depression, its Cold War, its New Coke...how we respond to them will determine the shape of our future, and of our little republican experiment.
- The threat isn't just that we're going to become Greece or Ireland--being forced into radical austerity plans by creditor nations and global financial institutions; it's that even if we DON'T become Greece or Ireland, even if we can continue to borrow scads of money at reasonably affordable rates, we will have engaged in the highly immoral act of forcing our children and grandchildren to pay for OUR consumption...just because we could.
- In light of the preceding point, every federal officeholder, and every candidate for federal office should, from this point forward, be expected to endorse a specific plan for long-term, sustainable budgetary balance in this country, or should introduce a specific plan of his/her own; just throwing rocks from the sidelines is no longer an option (quit looking at your shoes, Bernie Sanders).
- The specific plans to be supported or introduced should be mathematically honest--as scored by the CBO, or an independent/ bipartisan/nonpartisan entity outside of Congress--and politically achievable (no plans that rely solely on spending cuts, for example, because Dems will never support them; no plans that cut the defense budget in half, either, because Republicans will never support them).*
- The obligation of average Americans in this process is two-fold: (1) be prepared to sacrifice a bit, for the good of the country, and out of a sense of moral responsibility to younger generations; and (2) deny your vote/money/time/energy to any candidate for office, Republican or Democrat, who has not lent his/her support to, or introduced, a specific, mathematically honest, politically achievable plan to create long-term budgetary balance.
*Here's the sticky issue with the "politically achievable" criterion: Democrats and Republicans alike will argue that plans that are not politically achievable today WILL be politically achievable once the American people have all of the facts before them and get educated on the issues, OR once the American people have the good sense to return the country to one-party rule.
Footnote: Of course, if the president were to say all of this, he'd have to come up with his own plan...not necessarily on Wednesday, but soon.
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