Column by JOHN SWEENEY
The News Journal
05/05/2006
America is on a fudge sundae diet.
It thinks it can keep piling on the fudge, whipped cream and chocolate scoops and still shed pounds. The sundaes will never end, and no one will ever have to pay for them in added pounds around the middle.
In other words, the nation is dreaming.
Jonathan Rauch, a Washington reporter, used that image in the early 1990s to describe not sundaes but the way presidents and Congress promise us Social Security, Medicare and all of the other government benefits without ever giving us the check.
Move ahead a decade and we can see the waiter coming with the check. He's not here yet and we can still do something about it. But the president keeps pushing tax cuts while adding benefits, and Congress either tacks on bridges to nowhere or stalls any action.
The dream lives on.
Delaware got an inkling of the size of the bill earlier this week when the Concord Coalition brought a traveling show of budget experts to town to show what the fudge sundae diet is doing to us.
Budget experts usually are baffling people, but this group was clear, to the point, and scary as hell.
The experts included David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States, who said point-blank that old age will be miserable for many and today's young people will be burdened with debt and lose opportunities that we now take for granted.
Here's the Congressional Budget Office forecast:
Social Security and Medicare costs took up 42 percent of the federal budget in 2005. By 2016, they will take up 56 percent. After that, things will get really bad.
And that's the optimistic outlook.
Who pays?
The reality is somebody will have to pay that bill. But who? Baby boomers are aging. Today, 37 million people are 65 or older. In 2025, that number will reach 62 million. In 2045, it'll be 80 million.
There won't be enough workers to take their place. Those who are working will either have to pay outrageously high taxes or the old people's checks will stop and their medical bills will go unpaid. Probably both.
The Concord Coalition people are going around the country trying to wake up Americans. Former Sen. Warren Rudman and the late Sen. Paul Tsongas formed the group in 1992 to advocate something rare in those days: fiscal responsibility. If it was rare then, it's nonexistent now.
Walker advocated a pay-as-you-go philosophy. Whenever the president or a member of Congress wants to add a benefit, something else must be dropped from the budget or taxes must be raised to pay for it.
The group says the three biggest things needed are presidential leadership, bipartisanship in Congress and sustained outrage from the public.
Cross off the leadership part. President Bush appears unable or uninterested in leading the fight. He is pushing to keep his tax cuts of 2001, which were passed when a budget surplus was projected and before the war on terrorism. If the cuts become permanent, the day of doom will be that much closer.
Congress is anything but bipartisan. There are a few members on each side who will work together, but they have to fight their own leaders.
That leaves it up to us to stay mad. The coalition speakers want citizens to go to meetings and pay attention. When the presidential candidates come around, force them to address the mounting debt.
For starters, go to the group's Web site for plenty of ideas and information: www.concordcoalition.org.
Otherwise, get used to living on your fudge sundae dreams.
Contact John Sweeney at jsweeney@delawaronline.com.