It is generally assumed (and certainly hoped) that there will be a long-overdue focus on cutting spending when Republicans become the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in January.
The GOP will not control the Senate, of course, and liberal President Barack Obama will still be in office to block proposed spending cuts, too. Nevertheless, with the public watching closely, it will be politically costly for the Democrat Senate and president to defeat sensible spending reductions approved in the House. The Democrats may not “go along” with everything the GOP House does, but it will be difficult for them to reject everything as well – particularly since it is obvious to almost everyone by now that we need to slash spending.
Programs such as Social Security and Medicare are headed for bankruptcy some years down the road, and the United States continues to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in annual interest on our staggering $13.8 trillion national debt. Lots of that interest goes to competitors such as Communist China, which holds a great deal of our debt. Given these alarming circumstances, it could not be any clearer that we need to rethink our economic policies.
Still, the strong temptation in Congress will be to do “too little.” There are some not very surprising indications that while the American people may favor cutting spending in general, the enthusiasm is somewhat less when particular programs that individual Americans favor are mentioned. That has some in politics and the news media suggesting that it will just be “too tough” to reduce spending and – eventually – balance the budget.
Well, we don’t doubt that reducing Congress’ addiction to reckless spending will be difficult. Various special interests are going to be upset no matter what you cut.
But we should be careful to distinguish between legitimate concerns about how hard it will be to make wise spending choices and defeatist rhetoric that is really about maintaining the spending “status quo.” Even if we were not in an economic crisis, our nation has no choice but to cut spending. Our debt and the interest we are paying on it are diverting massive amounts of money out of our economy, where it could be used for productive investment and job creation. And the money we are borrowing today will translate into crippling tax hikes in the future.
Making cuts won’t be easy, but sticking with the wasteful, unsustainable and often unconstitutional policies that got us into the crisis in the first place is absolutely not an alternative.