COLUMN: Tackling the deficit

Last week, the President announced the creation of a bipartisan debt-reduction commission. This commission will, as Obama said, “attempt the impossible” in tackling a deficit that currently equals almost 11 percent of the total economy.

To date, efforts to reduce the federal deficit have been feeble at best. The President’s proposal to freeze non-discretionary spending, which accounts for only 17 percent of the annual deficit, will still result in average deficits of $1 trillion through 2020. That is an improvement over the $1.6 trillion projected for fiscal year 2010, but it is still bad news.

More bad news is the likelihood that the debt commission will ultimately recommend more tax increases than spending cuts. As Obama said, “The politics of dealing with chronic deficits is fraught with hard choices, and, therefore, it's treacherous to officeholders here in Washington. As a consequence, nobody has been too eager to deal with it."

He is absolutely right. Politicians do not want to deal with the problem. But that is exactly what they must do if we are to avoid economic catastrophe.

By 2015, years of accumulated deficits will result in a public debt equal to almost 73 percent of the gross domestic product. By 2020, it will equal 77 percent of the GDP.

It is time to make some difficult choices.

No politician wants to cut Social Security, Medicare or other entitlement programs. Nor do lawmakers want to do away with any program or project that routes federal dollars to their state or district. But it must be done.

Social Security will be broke in less than 30 years. Medicare will be insolvent in seven. Yet how many politicians are demanding the retirement age be pushed back or Medicare benefits reduced? To do so would be political suicide.

Is there a way to reconcile the need for tough fiscal measures with a politician’s desire to be re-elected? Probably not. The President admitted that one of the benefits of his debt commission would be to give Congress “political cover” if they chose to enact unpopular cost-saving measures. However, our lawmakers would not need “political cover” if they were more interested in serving their country than saving their political careers.

Perhaps the solution to this problem begins with Congressional term limits. If we had a “citizen Congress” instead of a body of career politicians, maybe our elected representatives would find it easier to make the right choices for the country.

As Tom Coburn, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma, pointed out, "We already have a commission to confront our debt. It's called the United States Congress. If members of Congress aren't up to that task, we don't need a new commission; we need a new Congress." Exactly.

We cannot continue to send the same self-serving incompetents back to Washington each election. As the President recently said, "Without action, the accumulated weight of that structural deficit, of ever-increasing debt, will hobble our economy, it will cloud our future, and it will saddle every child in America with an intolerable burden."

We no longer have a choice. If current Congressional lawmakers cannot make the tough choices, then the voters must send representatives to Washington that will.

Kristi Reed is a reporter for the Barrow Journal. She can be reached at kreed@barrowjournal.com.