Get serious now about debt
President Barack Obama's lack of leadership on fiscal responsibility has been striking, mainly because he has talked about the need to reduce deficit spending and the national debt and has done nothing to make that happen.
Even worse, he took it a step further this week in vilifying the House Republican plan for reducing the deficit over the next 10 years - making it clear he is more interested in campaigning than leading.
The president has, however, ignored the recommendations of the bipartisan debt commission he appointed, the most important being the need to address entitlement program spending. For all of his talk about restoring fiscal responsibility, Obama's 2012 budget would increase federal spending, deficits and taxes over the next decade.
By contrast, it was a formerly obscure Republican congressman from Wisconsin who staked out a bold plan for reducing the $14 trillion debt by more than $6 trillion over the next decade. Now the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan made the brave move of seeking Medicaid and Medicare entitlement reforms as part of his plan, knowing full well that Democrats would use the worst hyperbole, purely for political purposes, to claim such reforms would hurt the old and helpless.
It didn't take long for them to deliver, with the president leading the way.
"Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America," the president said in his Ryan rebuttal speech last week. He went on to claim the Republican plan would pit "children with autism or Down syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society."
We're not so sure all aspects of Ryan's plan should be embraced, but the most important thing Ryan is doing is explaining how the country's safety-net entitlement programs will eventually collapse without serious intervention.
And he is correctly framing the dangers of allowing the current debt trajectory to continue. The only reason the government can continue to spend far more than it takes in every year is that it is able to borrow from other countries and entities that are still willing to gamble on the U.S. dollar. As the deficit rises, so does doubt in the dollar, however, and it won't go on forever.
Yet Obama continues to say the country needs to "invest in roads and bridges and broadband and high-speed rail."
For crying out loud, Obama and congressional Democrats have already "invested" the country into a world of hurt.
What's most crucial for Americans to understand, amid all the exaggerated claims of harm that will come from spending cuts, is that the federal government is currently spending at unprecedented levels.
Obama's debt plan calls for tax increases, and maybe some tax increases will be necessary to address the country's fiscal problems.
But it is remarkable how Democrats so cavalierly call for tax hikes, seemingly without considering impacts on the economy, as if government is the highest priority. They seem to disregard how higher gas prices have already had a tax-like sapping effect on economic activity, and they're always talking about tax increases for "millionaires and billionaires" when in the past they've pushed for tax increases on job creators who earn far less than millions and billions.
They use the term "pay their fair share," as if higher income earners pay nothing at all now, when in reality top earners currently pay the bulk of overall taxes collected.
Unfortunately, Obama is correct when he said that the American people now have a "stark choice" in governing visions for the country. It couldn't be more clear.