What is $474.15 Billion dollars?
The fiscal cliff looms in the distance like a funnel cloud on the hard-packed plains of Texas. The key difference is we can avoid that wicked looking mess coming our way. Functionally, this is a historic opportunity, wrapped in gilt and handed to the parties with the same bows and trappings of the holiday preceding the impending fluster cluck that is about to go down. That gift; a moment to finally stop bullshitting and come together to get this nation on a path to a balanced budget, an aim at reducing the national debt, and reigning in the last decade and change of madcap spending that has gone on.
Those hoping for this know better. The only thing we, the American public, will get out of this deal is coal in our stockings which will be summarily taken away because it is neither green nor ours to use as an energy resource.
The New York Times has a fantastic Infographic available to the public where you can see firsthand what grew, what shrank, and what is owed to who and where. I will be frank, if the President or Congress is serious about cutting the deficit and balancing the budget then all the programs they swore to protect must share in some of the bloodletting.
Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly one-third of the budget by itself. Toss Social Security into the mix and over half the budget is consumed by these two programs alone. Defense spending. It rings in, for the first time, lower than the cost of Social Security, and is quickly being outpaced by the interest on the national debt.
This brings me to my beginning question; what is $474.15 billion dollars? That number is what is owed in interest on the national debt.
It is staggering to look at, and, mind you, that is the interest. Not some credit card minimum where part of what you pay hits the principle and we will ever so slowly knock it down. Nay good reader, this is pure interest without a dime set to the principle. I’ll be honest, that would be the first number I would be set to tackle for that number will be what kills us.
If the President’s moratorium on discretionary spending (which would freeze the large majority of defense spending but leave social security and Medicare/Medicaid alone) goes through then we’ve only slowed the train down, but it will chug along. Mayhaps you can knock out some of that principle. Hold back the rising tides, but the moratorium cannot last forever, and if it is not adapted to, the glut of costs that will come cascading down and crush any gains made.
So, while our elected officials piddle away the hours playing games of imaginary chicken and peek-a-boo with the press, handing out reports of “nothing to see here” we are getting buried. The interest grows, and will eclipse the costs of social security and Medicare/Medicaid if left untouched, all the while pledges are being made to not raise taxes on anyone and no programs will be cut. Looking at the reality on paper/webpage and listening to the news brings two conclusions to mind. Either those in power want this world to burn for the sake of petty feuds and broken ideologies, or they are, much to our chagrin, monumentally clueless as to what they have brought down upon all of us. It will come to a day when that cost, just to cover the interest being made on the debt, will choke us out, and we will be forced to cut to maintain or default. Best to do them now, with flexibility and foresight on our side than a later time when we must cut because there is no other option. When a monthly social security check is short $21 a month for living expenses versus hundreds of dollars short because there isn’t any money left to paid those who are owed. Petty promises and pledges won’t mean a damn thing then, and, to be frank, shouldn’t mean a damn thing now.
Old Jeffersonian 