Wake up and smell the crisis

Our nation is at a fiscal tipping point.

We knew this day was coming; there were many warning signs. Massive tax cuts. More spending. High budget deficits.

Now, we have an eager new class of politicians who are going to easily slash and cut their way to a balanced budget. Hooray!

The only bad part is that this is not possible. The numbers simply don’t add up.

Lawmakers on both the Left and the Right are trying to appease their constituents by promising to make large cuts to discretionary spending but leaving the “untouchables” (health, Social Security and defense) alone. The only problem is that these programs make up approximately 80 percent of the federal budget.

At the same time, Congress passed and President Obama signed legislation to extend tax breaks for higher-income Americans. It’s odd that proclaimed “fiscal conservatives” would support a plan that will add about $857 billion to the federal debt during the course of ten years. Just because it was bipartisan doesn’t make it not crazy.

Despite the doom and gloom, perhaps the comments of some commentators that our children should learn Chinese (to prepare for the inevitable takeover, ya know?) are a bit extreme. However, while I doubt that China will ever declare the United States its own, it’s reasonable to be slightly fearful of owing massive sums of money to a country that isn’t exactly open to democracy.

Is the U.S. going to have to become the next Greece before we realize the extent of our trouble? We should be rioting in the streets; instead, we’re accepting the status quo.

Yes, I want low taxes, strong defense and happy, non-indigent seniors. But as a student who is soon going to be pushed into the scary world outside of academia known as real life, I don’t want to be saddled with high taxes and subpar services due to the ignorance of politicians and voters before my time.

Here’s the reality: we will not balance our federal budget and tackle our debt until Congress musters the courage to cut nondiscretionary defense spending and alter the core of our major entitlement programs. There is simply not a way to preserve any semblance of the services our federal government currently provides while simultaneously making cuts adding up to trillions of dollars.

We can’t have our cake and eat it, too — something has to change. Let’s hope it’s the attitudes of the millions of Americans who need to wake up and demand real action, not just empty promises.

It’s sad that truth has become third rail.


E-mail: biglehar@indiana.edu