Category Archives: balanced budget

A Letter to Leaders

Dear leaders,
Everyday there are opportunities for principled compromise and proximate justice in your service. Some questions to guide your actions:
Do you care about the poor or your power?

Do you want hospitable, legal and secure immigration or talking points?
Can you critique ideas and policies without exaggeration and insult?
Will your secure our financial future with a balanced budget, or just pretend that it does not matter?
Will you look for partnerships or do you prefer polemics and “gotchas’?
Will you fashion reparations as access, equity, and opportunity or another way to stoke resentment?
Will you affirm freedom of conscience and religion and allow people to bring their best selves to the public square, or will you despise the very traditions that offer your current liberties?
Are you willing to normalize your pensions and retirements, saving buckets of money, and serve the public without thought to your gain?
In short, will you be adults, reflecting before reacting, negotiating instead of just negating, and offering vision for the future?


For our Political Leaders

Our political impasses are solvable…except the lust for power blurs vision for the common good. We can balance a budget, secure our borders, offer equity and opportunity, provide for our defense and rebuild infrastructure with skilled people ready to help. But too many leaders would rather agitate than build. It is easier to promise the unachievable than call for integrity.

I have three questions as you propose legislation:
First, who benefits? Are we aiming for the common good or lining the pockets of a few?

Second, what are the principles behind the laws? The ideas and virtues underneath do matter.

Third, how will we pay for this? Are we moving toward fiscal stability or deficit-spending our way to power?
Stewarding the public trust requires courage, moral clarity and wisdom.

“Solving” the Budget Deficit Crisis

For over 50 years, Democratic and Republican Administrations and Congressional leaders have tolerated and sometimes touted deficit spending, resulting in a huge national debt. Balanced Budget Amendments are often proposed but dead on arrival in committee because no one wants to offend constituents or appear lacking in compassion.

The fundamental flaw is simultaneously maintaining a federal welfare state and a close to wartime economy at the same time. “Guns and butter” are problematic. This does not mean we must sacrifice adequate defense and concrete compassion! What we need is a complete reprogramming of political mindsets that merely “kick the can” down the road for the next generation in order to appease various special interests.

As I write these words, tax revenues are at an all-time high. So why are deficits also ballooning? Every new President and set of Congressional leaders promise to “sharpen the pencils” and “go line by line” through the budget….and then they cave to political expediency.

Underneath the surface is even more ominous news – there are no “savings” locked away for Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid needs in the decades ahead. Since the 1970s, it is all a numbers game!

As an aside, if we managed our family budgets like our national (and sometimes local and state) government(s), we would declare bankruptcy and perhaps face serious criminal/civil charges.

So, what do we do? Here is a prescription (using the insights of many folks much smarter than me):

  • Decide to live within our means. Apart from extreme global emergencies, this is vital.
  • Privatize government pensions and benefits so that elected officials are not immune to economic realities.
  • Streamline government services with the help of ethical and efficient business leaders so that recipients get what they need, and bureaucracy is minimized. It is a moral issue when government keeps ballooning and the poor and our soldiers barely make it.
  • Simplify the tax system and eliminate the egregious loopholes that reward the crafty and penalize workers.
  • Establish priorities so that when revenues go up, there are places for the extra funds (including debt reduction). And if revenues fall below expectations, plans are in place for judicious cuts.
  • Begin debt repayment and true Social Security savings once there is a balanced budget.
  • Establish alternatives to the public employees’ unions that forget their source is the American taxpayer.

With these starting points, we can wisely confront our warfare and welfare policies and devise new strategies for defense and compassion. Compassion is best administrated locally, with federal ethical oversight. We must be prepared to confront terrorism and aggression without being an occupying force longer than needed. And our veterans deserve good care.

Every day, thousands of families happily discover debt-free living. When normal includes sacrifice and saving, stewardship of limited resources and creative budgeting, families flourish and the foundation for prosperity is assured. It is time to get the government off the credit cards and on new pathways.

Careful budgeting will not “starve the children” or weaken our military – just the opposite. Today’s discipline is tomorrow’s destiny. Imagine the USA being the largest creditor instead of the largest debtor. It is possible within a decade if we have courage and self-restraint, creativity and vision for generations yet unborn. We need no long fear being held hostage by hostile powers that own our debt.

We can do this.

 

Positive Politics, Part 2

Dear Republicans:
Will you make history or miss another moment and pass the problems forward?
Courage, humility and unselfish love compels action. Please begin negotiating and passing bipartisan legislation that benefits the most people possible.

You may never get the extreme Left to join you, but there are persons of conscience and common good that want to refine healthcare, improve infrastructure, secure our borders and transform immigration.

Please create budgets that move us toward debt reduction. If you care about efficiency and ethics, please transform systems so resources get to the people that need them. You were elected to create a new environment in Washington, D.C. Simplify tax laws, stop currying favor with lobbyists and making side deals.

We just endured 8 years of opaque contempt for dialogue. Please do not make the same mistakes. Forge friendships across every aisle.

Regardless of your distaste or support for the President, you have a moral obligation to bring legislation for signature. “Open covenants openly arrive at…” should be the norm, including laws the average person can read and understand. President Reagan and Speaker O/Neill negotiated. President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich were not friends, but came the closest to a balanced budget since 1967.

It just takes courage, humility and love for the American people.

A Great Reversal is Possible

Endless federal deficits. Porous borders and immigration chaos. Selective enforcement of oversight laws and regulations in the EPA and IRS. Health care for all that includes 2400+ exemptions, including government employees. A foreign policy without direction. Serious scandals dismissed as phony and a media that is rarely investigating those currently in power.

These and other problems are not five years in the making, though the current Administration has done little to resolve and much to exacerbate this state of affairs. Our current crises are a century in the making, beginning with some of the unintended consequences of the Roosevelt Administration in the first decade of the 1900s, continuing through the elitism of the Wilson years, accelerated by the policies of FDR and codified by LBJ’s Great Society in the 1960s. Neither Democratic or Republican leaders have been able to reverse the trends that are presently carrying our American experiment toward oblivion.

The fundamental issue for over a century is the disempowerment of individuals and local government by the Leviathan of ever-increasing federal power. It is important to note that this essay is not a nostalgic foray into a mythical past. We need federal agencies for everything from protecting civil rights to decent food and a clean environment. The ethical and social oversight that ensures freedom and opportunity is a vital part of the original intention of the founders. What was never in their minds and must be altered in ours was the federal administration of so much public money! The corruption, bad stewardship and inefficiencies of federal power hinder the good intentions of most citizens that want compassion, safety and reasonable public services.

We must begin a reversal today and re-empower local and state governments and restore the dignity of personal virtue as the critical foundation for liberty. This will not happen overnight and will call upon every moral and spiritual resource we possess. We can begin by taking ownership of our decisions and votes and calling upon public servants to serve rather than be enriched at our expense. We must not allow collectivist or libertarian extremists or social elites to control the public conversations critical to our future.

We can reverse a century of malfeasance in less than a decade if we will find the courage to stop over-promising and under-delivering largess and call upon the better natures our citizens to contribute to the common good through their business and charitable enterprises. We must welcome people of all faiths (or none) into the civil-political discourse and stop pretending that religious values have no place in public life. Coercion of conscience has no place in a free society, but faith convictions are not restricted to the private sphere. Polite and robust debate is good for freedom and we must not permit one political party or religious tradition to impose their will and stifle dissent.

Wealth can be created while caring for the environment and compensating employees fairly. The tax code needs complete transformation – and some folks will need to find other employment. Military readiness and care for veterans are important priorities. Our policies must stop rewarding irresponsible behavior. Our management of the public purse needs an overhaul, releasing some local, state and federal workers to the private sector. Immigration policy requires courage and decriminalizing drugs is a social folly.

All these words are easy to write – and extremely hard to practice because our system discourages disrupting current norms that might displace voters. When enough citizens find courage and their elected officials discover integrity, we can reverse the tides and uncover new wellsprings of potential and prosperity.