It is easier to believe that big deficits are prudent and a balanced budget is irresponsible; that tax cuts increase government receipts; that wars pay for themselves; that there is such thing as a free lunch, and what goes around doesn’t come around. The President’s argument that a tax increase will erase future jobs is, like so many of his prognostications, dead, and perhaps deadly, wrong. The reverse is true. The enormous deficits, current $9 trillion debt and associated interest payments will, as boomers retire, increasingly become a drag on the economy and put America at risk for catastrophic economic collapse, which, by the way, is essentially the opinion that former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil was fired for. (For a good analysis of why deficits matter, see Hale Stewart’s article “Why Clinton’s Economy Was Better”). Indeed, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers yesterday warned we may be on the brink of recession, and last march, prior to the sub-prime debacle, Alan Greenspan pegged the chance of recession this year at 33%. This is the fruit of the President’s tax cuts and more than $3 trillion expansion of our national debt and $150 billion increase in annual debt payments – an economy so precarious there is a good chance of recession this year. Here’s one thing on which you can bet: The Bush Administration will, at the vaguest indication of economic downturn, demand tax cuts to boost the economy.
How could we possibly slip into recession while enjoying full employment, low taxes, low interest rates and low inflation with massive and supposedly stimulative deficit spending? It’s because there’s no free lunch, folks, and sooner or later we, and if not “we”, certainly our children, are going to pay a very steep price for our deadly national sins of greed, gluttony and pride.Â
Obviously, “The president himself must be responsible”. If, however, we are to usher in a “responsibility era”, it is first and foremost required that the electorate act responsibly, and we can start by expecting to pay for the services we receive from our government and stop saddling future generations with the burdens that are rightfully ours to bear.
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