THAT AINT NO CLIFF ITS THE END OF THE WORLD
By Adrian Murray
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Okay help me out with this because as most of you
may know I have this unhealthy
obsession with balance sheets. Call it an OCD if you want and put me on Xanax if you must but I have this thing about you know balancing.
So we know that unless something is done to bring spending under control
America will go bankrupt and well be back to hunting for our own food and possibly engaging in cannibalism or worse.
Balancing the Federal Budget may be boring to many but Im sure it could be explained by modern psychiatry if modern psychiatrists still practiced psychiatry rather than prostitute themselves as high-priced hookers (literally) for the likes of Merck and Pfizer. But thats another story and I hope you wont mind if I pray that Billy Tauzin suffers mightily in hell.
But back to balance sheets. Have you seen the federal governments lately? Holy mother of….
Im sure theres an asset side on it somewhere but all I can find is liabilities. Something north of $16 trillion in liabilities. Fortunately we have really excellent representatives representing us in the House of Reresentatives and the debt is only increasing by $1.2 trillion every year which could have been much much worse if our representatives had been any worse than they actually are but theyre not so were lucky.
Theyre only as bad as they are which has to be seen as a good thing. Always look on the bright side of life I always s
ay. Toddlers and Tiaras may get cancelled or it may not get that bad. Who knows? But who wins Dancing With The Stars may no longer seem quite as relevant.
Were always told by everyone running for office that the priority is to get spending under control. Its somewhat interesting that this has been Priority #1 for every Republican office seeker for 25 years back when the entire federal budget the whole thing! Everything! was $806 billion about the same amount that was authorized in just one bill the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act (Haha!) which was designed to stimulate the economy by building shovels or something so unemployed Americans could dig holes. Or so went the theory at the time.
Truth be told though the current spending deficits and the mounting debts are not the fault of Barack Obama. Barack Obama hasnt a clue how the government works and any insinuation that he does could lead to the conclusion that he is competent which he most decidedly is not. Hes competent in much the same way Gilligan was competent when he tried to help out and put the radio back together. And Ginger was a bimbo.
As any competent honest politician (I know I know. Just humor me and play along here) will tell you almost 70 of the federal budget is untouchable because it funds mandatory programs like Social Security Medicare Veterans Benefits and the like as well as interest on the money that was borrowed to pay for it all.
Of the 30 thats left all of it is deficit spending. Every penny. The military education energy transportation the whole government bureaucracy all of it is financed with borrowed money.
Whats worse we could eliminate it all every bean counter every inspector every scientist every single person on the federal payroll including the military and every single person on welfare or government assistance and
we still wouldnt be able to balance the budget. Thats because today we are even borrowing money just to pay for the mandatory programs.
The reason this is not Obamas fault and thus this is not Obamas deficit is that all the spending on the mandatory side and much of whats spent on the discretionary side is triggered automatically by programs put in place decades ago. It wouldnt matter if the president were Obama or Romney or McCain or Bush or Clinton or Reagan. The spending increases are on autopilot.
They are systemic. No one has to write a bill or pass a law to spend money. Its already been done years ago freeing Congress to do more important work like naming National Pancake Day test driving the interns and great things like that. The reason is that the 70 of spending which is mandatory increases every time a new person becomes eligible for the benefits. With 10000 baby boomers reaching the age of 65 every day (thats 3.6 million per year) that 70 of the budget will soon be 90 and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Sorry.
This is why the cut cap and balance" crapola from two years ago was such well irritating crapola. It is impossible to balance the federal budget because even if you cut everything out of it except Social Security Medicare Veterans Benefits Transportation (highways and ports) and agriculture youd still be at least $200 billion short every year. And that shortage will grow every year as more boomers retire. So can we please be spared another phony round of double-dare-ya-to-raise-the-debt-ceiling chest-thumping next time around? Can we please not be forced to endure more meaningless bromides such a cut cap and balance? It cant be done.
Meanwhile the Federal Reserve is engaged in a last gasp attempt to eliminate the debt through inflation by printing money on match books cocktail napkins beer cans and anything else that can absorb ink inevitably making the dollar roughly competitive with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.
The other day I had the good fortune to be able to pose the following question to a well-regarded congressman: The Ryan plan which proposes to rein in Social Security and Medicare doesnt kick in until 2020 and then takes ten years to phase in. Since nobody is talking about making any significant cuts in discretionary spending and there isnt enough to cut to make much of a difference anyway will we survive until 2020? If we keep running up $1.5 trillion in deficits for the next eight years the national debt will grow to $28 trillion before the Ryan plan even takes effect.
For the ten years of the phasing in of the Ryan plan the deficits will grow another $15 trillion (at least). So eighteen years from now the national debt will be at a minimum $43 trillion. How does this not spell disaster?
The answer reminded me of this:
I knew a man Bojangles and hed dance for you
In worn out shoes
With silver hair a ragged shirt and baggy pants
The old soft shoe."
So what happened? How did we get to this point? Why are the sunset years of 75 million baby boomers who worked all their lives and paid into these programs now such a looming burden on the federal budget?
The generation that came before the boomers the so-called Greatest Generation managed to not bankrupt the treasury on their way out the door.
What went wrong? The answer is that boomers made up such a large percentage of the population over one third of it in their most productive years that they were easily able to fund the retirement needs of those that came before them. There were over six workers for every retiree for many of those years. Today there are barely two workers for every beneficiary. At some point every worker will have his own retiree to care for.
So what happened to the generation that was to come after the boomers the ones whose contributions would keep
the system funded?
The dirty little secret is: we killed it. Over the last 40 years since Roe v Wade over fifty million babies have been snuffed out in the womb while politicians prattled and stars danced with other stars and Lindsay got another DUI. Assuming they too would have had children had they been granted by man the fortunes intended by God it is not unrealistic to assume America today has 100 million or more fewer people that it would have had it not been for the carnage of abortion.
Thats what happened to all the follow-on workers. They were denied the opportunity to live.
So now we head to an era in America that will be very dark indeed. Seventy-five million retirees over the next eighteen years - 21 of the population no longer contributing productively but consuming 50 of all revenues to the federal government with a decimated follow-on generation unable and increasingly unwilling to sacrifice their earnings and their futures for the self-indulgence of others who led the nation to the edge of the cliff and blithely pushed them off.
No one wants to answer the question about what happens next because the question cannot be answered. There is no precedent for what is about to happen.
There is not at least in the American experience another example of one generation handing off such an unmitigated disaster to the next. Liberals can blame conservatives. Republicans can blame Democrats. We can all stand around in a circle and blame each other. But were not seriously having the discussion.
The subject is simply taboo. Politicians dance around the issue as if their feet are on fire. But the day of reckoning is coming sooner rather than later. The bubble is about to burst and it may soon be out of our control and in the hands of those who will have to live with the mess thats left behind.
Youll know how it all worked out when you hear back from the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Good luck.
Adrian J. Murray is president of Painless Performance Products in Fort Worth Texas and past President of the Fort Worth 9-12 Project.
