Spending Bill

Last year I saw a very interesting documentary about impending fiscal doom called I.O.U.S.A by David Walker, formerly Comptroller General and head of the General Accounting Office. The message was quite simple and uplifting: “We’re financially screwed.”

The nation’s largest short term problem is the financial crisis, except if you get blown up anytime soon. There is a huge budget deficit that gets piled on top of our national debt every year. This is being financed by selling bonds, mostly overseas, which will probably be paid back with cheap inflation-racked dollars.

Walker walks us through the history of deficits of this country which were built up in times of crisis and war and quickly paid back. Until now. The current debt problem isn't resulting from The Vietnam War, Reagan’s military spending, nor our excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a problem of “mandatory” spending which, unfortunately the military isn’t a part.

The FDR Administration saw the birth of government programs designed to finance your retirement and pay your medical bills. The amount spent per recipient and who the recipients are off-limits to the President’s veto pen as these laws are already on the books. “Reforming Social Security” has become political fighting words rather than igniting a serious talk about the root of the financial mess we’re in or whether the government should be paying for geezers’ golf lifestyles in Florida.

This supposedly compassionate “cradle to grave” nanny care is breaking us and we’re too busy playing Guitar Hero to notice. We see undigestable brain-numbing numbers like our $400 Billion annual deficit but fail to see that we have unfunded liabilities of $53 Trillion. That’s right, our national debt plus our retirements, doctor bills and general welfare will cost each of us – I don’t know because my calculator won’t run numbers that high.

In his campaign President Obama berated President Bush’s deficit spending as if Bush invented fiscal irresponsibility, yet signed a spending bill of $787 Billion with every nickel borrowed. In a not-so-rare moment of pretzel logic from John Kerry on the Senate floor speaking in favor of the bill essentially said, “Where were the Republicans the past eight years while we ran up these huge deficits in the first place?” The solution to a financial mess created by drunken spending must be to blow a boatload more.

The Walker documentary wasn’t exactly a blockbuster. On the opening weekend the wakeup call drew only me and four others to the theater.