Be Responsible

One Response to “Be Responsible”

1. MK on August 15th, 2009 3:04 pm

   Fascinating. Look at the tag line at the end about keeping peace. Very interesting.

   So much has changed since 1960 in terms of federal deficits (revenue and spending imbalances), changes in mandatory and discretionary spending, entitlements, and demographic stresses. I wonder how many people now debating health care issues would be willing to go back to the situation in 1960, prior to the existence of Medicare. To pay for their medical care in old age from their own resources, despite often being on fixed incomes, or to depend on their still-working children to help them out with medical expenses. It was a very different time.

   Just look at the changes in the budget and in unfunded liabilities since 1960. One year after the passage of the Medicare and Medicaid legislation in 1965, defense spending made up 43% of the federal budget. Discretionary spending accounted for 67% of the federal budget in 1966. By 2007, defense spending made up 20%, Medicare and Medicaid 19%, and only 38% of the budget outlay was discretionary rather than mandatory spending.

   Over the next 20 years, 10,000 people *per day* will become eligible for Social Security. If the nation continues on the path it has been on for the last few years, it is estimated that in 20 years 76 cents out of every one dollar spent by the federal government will go towards retirees, health care for seniors and the poor, and towards bond holders. As of 2005, unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits were estimated to be over $43 trillion and rising. By 2008, just Medicare itself as a program was in the hole $34 trillion. The Medicare prescription legislation passed in 2003 added $8 trillion to projected unfunded liabilities.

   Rarely do you see discussion of any of this. Bruce Bartlett, who hasn’t hestitated to criticize his side in the past, recently gave his view, pointing to a number of economic and fiscal and financial problems that he believes had their roots in the policies followed during the last 8 years.
   http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-12/the-gops-misplaced-rage/full/ Bartlett’s article made me wonder whether George W. Bush, who I think had elements of being a genuinely compassionate conservative, would have tackled health care reform had 9/11 not occurred.

   Steve Benen has a follow up to the Bartlett piece today at
   http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_08/019503.php#more
   That I link to it should not be construed as my either agreeing or disagreeing with Benen’s framing (I march much to the tune of my own drummer on many subjects). But I did find Bartlett’s email to Benen, quoted at the second link interesting. Bartlett was a Reagan era supply sider who served in the George H. W. Bush administration, as well.

   As a very pragmatic, sober policy wonk, I wonder what RN would have thought of the fiscal and financial outlook during the Bush administration and now? Would he have supported groups such as the Concord Coalition? There certainly are multiple challenges ahead. A nonpartisan group has published a very sobering look at the nation’s future, covering fiscal, economic, domestic (including health care) and defense issues. See
   http://www.thepresidency.org/pubs/Saving_Americas_Future_report.pdf

   One of the people involved in the futures project, whom I know personally, spoke a few years ago in a speech about what he viewed as fiscal and leadership deficits. He told the audience that “with regard to leadership, we need more leaders in the public sector, the private sector and the citizen sector who exhibit four key attributes, and hopefully you are one of these: courage to state the facts and speak the truth and to do the right thing, even though it may not be popular, even though it may be counter-cultural; the integrity to practice what you preach and to lead by example, to recognize that the law is the floor of acceptable behavior, and who strive for a higher calling; creativity to find new ways to
   solve old problems and to help others to see the way forward; and stewardship, last but not least, to recognize that our responsibilities as leaders is not just to generate positive results today, not just to maximize value and mitigate risk today, not just to leave things better off when we leave than when we came, but most importantly, and the heaviest lift,
   to leave things better positioned for the future.”

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