Posted on 01/21/2013 8:39:59 PM PST by Lorianne
Moral Imperative: I speak often in these pages about things fiscal, financial and economic. Given that I am a CPA and sit on three committees in Congress that deal with money (Budget, Financial Services and Joint Economic), this is to be expected. But, I am not all about money. And, the nation's problems are not all about money. As big a problem as our debts and deficits are, they are emblematic of deeper and actually more significant moral and cultural issues.
For some time now, we have heard of those who Tom Brokaw dubbed "the greatest generation", those who sacrificed through a world war to vanquish fascism and imperialism and leave a stronger America for their children. We can go back further to speak of the generation that took the risks to establish this country in the late 18th century or of the generation that fought the Civil War. In each case, said generation sacrificed in order to leave a better and more prosperous country of opportunity for their children.
But, what are we doing now? What will be the legacy of my generation? Our debt and deficit crisis is largely caused by giving ourselves health care and retirement benefits without paying for them. But, we "deserve" them. We are "entitled". We paid for them. The problem is that none of that is true. I have paid Medicare taxes my entire working life, and I started earning a paycheck when I was 16. I am 57 years old and, therefore, am 8 years away from Medicare benefits. In spite of that, I have only paid in 1/3 of the cost of the benefits I will likely receive. The rest, fully two-thirds of every doctor visit or medical procedure, will be borrowed. That means my kids will have to figure out how to pay for it.
I use myself as an example, but I am not unique here. No one receiving Medicare now or about to receive it has paid anywhere near the full cost. The same is true of Social Security, although those numbers are not as lopsided. And, we all want to care for the indigent, but we do not pay enough taxes to cover Medicaid expenses either.
So, as a society, we have decided that we want a bunch of stuff right now so that our standard of living will be higher...so that we can buy more things and live more comfortably. And, we don't want to pay for it. Instead, we demand that people in the future pay for it through less opportunity and lower expectations and a lower living standard. Instead of sacrificing to leave the next generation a brighter future, we are rewarding ourselves more than is our due and leaving the next generation with less opportunity, lower expectations and a lower living standard. It is selfish. It is just plain wrong.
The financial markets are also a part of the problem right now. Markets today are dominated by traders rather than investors. Those traders have a very short-term outlook. They are interested in the next week or maybe, at most, the next quarter. So, they want any accommodation that preserves their outlook for a few months and the heck with the long-term future. “I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” as the cartoon character J. Wellington Wimpy proclaimed in 1932, seems to have become Wall Street's motto. These short-term markets will hate what we might have to do to fix the problem. But, we must start becoming less concerned about the next 3 weeks in order to build a brighter future for the next 3 decades.
In the final analysis, that's really what this debt limit fight is about. The president and his minions want to give you something for nothing. That's the source of their political strength. You get health care and retirement and education all for free because you are "entitled" to it and somebody else will pay for it. Problem is that those “somebody else's”, like the "rich" and the "corporations", don't have even 10% of the money necessary to pay for it. So, the people paying will be your children. And, they will pay dearly.
I understand that the world moves on. I understand that things change. But, some principles are enduring. Whatever happened to the idea that you are entitled to nothing that you don't earn or show yourself to be deserving of? What about the idea that no matter how good or how modest my station in life is, I want my kids to have it better?
Our debt and this president's perpetual trillion dollar deficits are not just bad economic policy - they are morally reprehensible. We have to make a stand. Barack Obama will be president for 4 more years, to my great disappointment. We are better to make that stand now, even if it means we all have to suffer the trauma of going past the debt limit, than to condemn our children to the consequences of future collapse that will impact them for decades.
No we don't, not through taxation anyway. Quit taxing me to "care for the indigent" and I'll take care of those I see fit to take care of.
This should be easy to explain to low information voters.
Raising the debt limit is not paying our bills!
We satisfy one debt, then create another-solving nothing
We are borrowing from Peter to pay Paul
Its 2013 and this guy is just starting to figure this out? He’s a CPA ... Whats he been doing all this time? These people are not our best and brightest. Can’t we just declare the government as unworkable and call for a do-over?
This simple truth unfortunately doesn’t have the glitz and glamor of the piece of total crap that came out of zero’s mouth today.
Cloward Piven is on it’s way.
The author does not understand that for progressives there is no morality. Whatever the issue is, it is not the issue. The issue is chaos and revolution, and to them, whatever is the result, it is better than what we have now.
Campbell is a Hugh Hewitt protege. Like Arnold was.
Hewitt is an influence peddler and party hack. He’s always promoting some squishy moderate or liberal Republican while trying to pass him off as a conservative.
Michael Medved does the same thing. Any time that they praise someone I like it makes me take a second look to see what I missed.
And to top it off, a country going bankrupt is beyond the comprehension of Q Public, and so they don’t believe it will ever happen - that the money runs out.
Always was leery of Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved. Have always turned them off, because they would say something that really bothered me. Some things I did agree with, so had listened for awhile-—then.....Wham! Some Left Wing socialist crud gets slid in.....
I do like to think of myself as just a “Common Sense” sort of person immersed in the Natural Law Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas. Sweet Logic! : )
bttt
The so-called Greatest Generation created a number of unsustainable wealth redistribution programs, aka Ponzi schemes. They got or are getting theirs on the backs of subsequent generations. Sorry, but that’s the truth. I think it’s great they won the war against national socialism, but then they brought socialism here. They fought for freedom then voted for servitude.
Isn’t this the guy who caved on homosexuals — what was it, shoehorning them into the military, or calling what they do “marriage”? I think the former.
And he’s talking about moral imperatives?
Your common sense has served you well.
Hugh Hewitt is a GOP courtier who finds it useful to pose as a conservative. He and Michael Medved use conservative language, but as you sensed they aren’t genuine.
When Hewitt first brought his carpet bag out to California in the 1990s we were enmeshed in the Prop 187 fight to try to rid ourselves of the burden that illegal aliens were imposing on our state. Hewitt, being a stooge of the GOP elite, opposed the grassroots conservatives in this campaign while posturing as a conservative to promote his own career. He is duplicitous at best. And Medved is even worse.
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