Live Within Your Means

How far can we kick the can? And how much must we disregard our kids (or the next generation, if you don't have kids) to not be willing to bite the bullet on government spending? It's getting pretty desperate, if you haven't noticed.

Fixing a budget is never fun, whether we're talking about personal finances or on a national level. "There will be pain" as President Obama's debt commission announced after presenting their non-binding recommendations. I think there needs to be pain. We're past the family-budget equivalent of skipping a movie to save money, but closer to canceling cable and selling the Lincoln to buy a used Ford Focus. If we think we can cut spending and it won't hurt then we're not cutting deep enough.

If you're on the Left, think of it this way. Lower debt = more funding, but that's in the long run. If we weren't paying hundreds of billions of dollars each year just to cover the interest on money that we've borrowed, we could hand out billions more to the poor and point some toward education while still paying down the debt. Who wouldn't rather help the poor than pay interest? Interest gets us nothing. That's what's bad about spending more than you bring in. "There will be pain", but the sooner we cut spending, the less painful it will be both for us and for the next generation.

If you're on the Right, think of it this way. Lower debt = lower taxes, but that's in the long run. The spending cuts you love won't be enough to eliminate the debt, though. We have to raise taxes too. I'm surprised to hear myself say that I actually have come to favor this, not because paying higher taxes makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but because spending cuts alone won't do it. You've heard it said that "The problem isn't that the government doesn't have enough money." (It's that we spend more than we have.) But because there are widows and orphans among our population, you understand that we can't eliminate welfare and social security. There are limits to what we can cut and still call ourselves human. So we need to raise taxes and "There will be pain", but the sooner we do, the less painful it will be both for us and for the next generation. If we don't fix the debt who will?

If you're in the Center, well, I don't know, just mix the previous two paragraphs together or something. Seriously, we can all help by taking care of ourselves and exercising some fiscal restraint of our own. Economists would disagree, saying we need to spend like mad to spur the economy, but that's how we got here. Spending more than we had, and borrowing to cover it. If you're not paying thousands in interest, you have more to spend! Let's get used to the mellower New Normal economy, and get on with the task at hand.
Happy Thanksgiving!