By Staff
We went down to Indiana for fireworks. All five of us, the first time in recent memory we were all together in the same vehicle, even on a holiday.
The night erupted on all four sides in surround sound. One of my more memorable Fourths of July. Then I came home and read Chuck Hagel's sobering "America: Our Next Chapter."
The Republican Nebraska senator could be running mate for either John McCain or Barack Obama.
Hagel gets the bind we're in while others pass problems along to the next Congress with lip service so as to not threaten their re-election by confronting reality. For example, we all should know by now that America's huge entitlement programs are on a trajectory that cannot be sustained.
In the 2007 fiscal year, the Congressional Budget Office told us that 62 percent of the $2.7 trillion budget was obligated to mandatory spending, including 44 percent just for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Each year the percentage of the budget committed to entitlement programs widens.
The current unfunded liability for Social Security over the next 75 years is approaching $5 trillion. Medicare's unfunded liability is almost $34 trillion, Medicaid's, $8.5 trillion. That's an unfathomable $47 trillion the American people are obliged to pay on top of a national debt of almost $9 trillion. How deep are we going to dig this hole?
Medicare is growing faster than any other government program because health care costs and the number of retirees are growing in tandem.
There will be enormous pressure to divert even more money, leaving nothing for other discretionary programs, be they roads, parks, housing, education or research.
Thanks to unchecked federal spending, America, with the world's largest economy, paradoxically finds itself mired in long-term financial trouble.
Our national debt held by the public exceeds $5 trillion, with half held by foreign investors and governments.
Every day, just to make interest payments on this ocean of debt, someone – the Saudis, the Chinese, the Europeans – must invest $2 billion to $3 billion in our Treasury bonds and notes.
Between interest on the national debt, government retirement plans, veterans' benefits and the three big entitlement programs, only about a third of the budget, $960 billion, remains with which the president and Congress can play politics.
And within that shrinking discretionary category, defense spending crowds out other possibilities. "One of these days," Hagel points out, "there will be no money for anything but war, debt and entitlements."
Plus, the $10 billion a month being spent in Iraq and another $2 billion a month on Afghanistan does not appear in the budget or as a liability on America's balance sheet because it is considered as "supplemental" or "emergency" funding.
"It's like magic money," Hagel says. "Since 2001, President Bush has sent 10 emergency supplemental appropriations requests to Congress, totaling $820 billion. We have been financing (two) wars through these sleight-of-hand appropriations, not through the regular oversight process in congressional hearings. No wonder our budget and fiscal policy is in shambles. The money does come from somewhere and still has to be accounted for. The administration and Congress have been very clever with smoke-and-mirror tactics like 'forward funding' and '13-month budgets' … Ultimately, the American people will have to pay."
While U.S. freshmen and sophomores in high school rank near the bottom fifth in applying math concepts to the real world, American youngsters spend more time watching television than in school.
In 2005, six of the top 10 corporate patent recipients in the United States were not U.S. companies.