A fundamental change in the values practiced in Washington, D.C., is more essential than any particular budget plan or tax reform package, if the United States is ever going to get its out-of-control finances under control.
Here's what I mean. Let's look at the word "extreme," which can be defined as the farthest point from center. "Extreme" is often used to describe the spending cuts in Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryans's proposed 2012 budget plan. Keep in mind, Ryan's plan would add another $5 to 6 trillion to the national debt over 10 years and doesn't bring the federal budget into balance for at least 20 years or so.
But if Ryan's plan is "extreme," is it then OK for the government to spend up to 40 percent more than it takes in in any given year? Unfortunately, overspending at that rate is rapidly becoming the norm. By all measures, such binge spending is simply unsustainable. Anything unsustainable is, by definition and common sense, extreme.
If any element of Ryan's budget plan is extreme, it's the spending levels, not the cuts.
So how did we get to the point where down is up and up is down in the political discussion that drives our policy? Unfortunately, our elected leaders have exploited the essential good nature of the American people.
For example, President Barack Obama doesn't like Ryan's proposal to replace the current financially unsustainable Medicare system with a plan that would have seniors choose their own health insurance and pay the premium using a taxpayer subsidy based on need. Ryan's plan also keeps the Bush tax cuts in place for everyone, the same cuts Obama extended by two years in January.
On the campaign trail, the president couples these two facts with a line about Ryan wanting seniors to pay more for their health insurance in order to give millionaires a tax cut. Now who in their right mind would want that, the president asks his audiences.
Me, for one, in this sense: Obama fails to acknowledge that the vast majority of millionaires are seniors or seniors in waiting.
According to the Federal Reserve's latest Survey of Consumer Finances (2007), the mean net worth of a family headed by a person 65 to 74 years old was just over $1 million. It was just under $1 million for families headed by a person 55 to 64 years old. Number 3 on the rich scale are families headed by someone 75 or older, with $638,000.
In financial terms, and on average, there's never been a better time to be elderly in the United States. From 2004 through 2007, the mean level of wealth for families with a person 65 to 74 years old at the helm grew 30 percent. The growth rate was 10 percent for families whose head of household was 75 or older.
When advocates decry the growing income gap between rich and poor, they're also describing a generational gulf where the old are getting richer while younger people and their nuclear families are essentially running in place.
In the face of this financial reality, asking seniors to pick up more of their health care costs isn't only sensible, it's a moral imperative
Without reform, Social Security and Medicare will be enshrined as wealth transfer vehicles in which the resources of the young are taken to subsidize and protect the financial assets of the old.
No senior I know wants to mooch off the young. But without reforms to the massive entitlements promised to seniors, Medicare and Social Security involve just that, putting us well down the road toward bankruptcy.
That's why in the coming days, weeks and years, our elected leaders need to readopt the value of honesty. When the American people are given the facts in their proper context, the sacrifices required to get this country back to fiscal sanity won't be considered sacrifices at all. They'll simply be considered the right thing to do.
