Posted by
J. R. Maddux on Tuesday, October 07, 2008 6:14:03 PM
In a coffee table discussion with some friends the other evening, one of them turned to me
and asked, "If you were president, what would you do about the economy?" I've thought a lot
about it, and here is the longer form of my answer.
No president can "fix" the broken economy alone. It will require the full, non-partisan
cooperation of a willing congress and a strong national will. That is to say it's going to
have to start with a lot of belt-tightening and sacrifice. If the government is unwilling to
do this, they will not long be able to require it of regular citizens.
What do you do when you have obligations due, and not enough money to cover them all
(a monthly event for many Americans)? First, you prioritize. You make the house payment/
rent, keep the lights on and put food on the table. Other demands divide what's left. Second,
you negotiate. You find out who will settle for less, who will let you skip a payment, or
who will restructure your paynments. Third, you get rid of what you don't absolutely need,
sometimes selling off assets (boats, extra cars, sporting equipment) and turn the cash (or
absence of payments) into the service of more pressing needs. Fourth, you curb spending.
You don't take on ANY MORE debt. You stop buying things you can't eat. Fifth, and
finally, you look for ways to earn extra money, whether via a second job, conversion of
assets, or whatever. As a result, slowly but surely you work your way out from under,
learning an important lesson about how the real world works in the process. In short,
it's all about setting priorities.
So, if you're the United States government, what can you do? Well, first you prioritize
the important things like reducing the national debt, saving Social Security and Medicare,
reducing dependency on foreign energy by developing clean, alternative domestic sources
and maintaining strong national security. The rest is basically window dressing. If that
sounds gauche to you, then you obviously haven't felt the bite yet.
How much do we give to other countries in foreign aid -- including countries that do
not particularly like us and sometimes actively work against us? It's billions! How much
do we dole out in federal research to explore vital national interests such as discovering
the quintessemtial female G-spot (that's actually a federally funded study). There are
hundreds, if not thousands of ludicrously trivial studies that do not bear on pressing
national interests but soak up billions of dollars in grants. What if legislators gave up
ALL earnarks, except for those related to vital infrastructure? Billions more could be
saved. What if we abandoned the flawed notion of nation building, or even trying to
spread Western-style democracy worldwide, even among cultures whose values it
cuts directly against? Billions more. What if we definitively shut down immigration
allowing only those in who can make an immediate and well-defined contribution to
our economy, and then deported those who are here illegally and imposing backbreaking
financial burdens on our cities and states? How many billions would that save? The
point is that the United States government is riddled with lardly luxuries that no one
in the White House or congress has had the guts to label for what they are and get
rid of. Soon they'll have no choice.
Now, I already hear the righteous bleating from the left. You'll isolate us from
the rest of the world. The world already doesn't like us, and they'll like us less if
we cut off the foreign aid. My response is that there is a word for those who only
treat you nicely when you give them money. The word is WHORE! The fact is
that we couldn't and wouldn't have to shut off all foreign aid. But we need to pare
it back a lot, and give priority to our closest allies in need.
How will the universities operate without the lucrative research grants? The answer
is that if the rest of the country has to cut back, so do they. "Publish or perish" needs to
take a back seat to "shut up and teach" for awhile. And couples will have to cope with
their sexual issues sans the invaluable G-spot revelation. Give America a break!
Democracy is a great thing, so far as we're concerned. But it is unspeakably arrogant
to think that cultures still dominated by pre-medieval philosophies and religions can
even assimilate that apprciation, let alone implement and maintain it. And somehow
we have lapsed into doctrine that if we bomb a country back to the stone age in a war,
we have the obligation to rebuild it. If they attacked us or provoked us to the extent that
we attacked them, then let THEM rebuild their own country. If those who suffer through
that ordeal don't like us very much, so what has changed?
Illegal immigration is taking a toll on our economy, causing untold hardships on state
and city governments and contributing mostly unskilled labor to our economy, Law
enforcement costs alone in dealing with this shadow population are staggering. We could
fix it, but it's a political hot potato, so we don't. Liberals will decry America's
abandonment of the huddled masses, the "tired, the poor, the wretched refuse." But
how many liberals do you see signing up to adopt a child when they've just lost their job?
If the United States hopes for an economic recovery, it has to take a hiatus from adopting --
and particularly the uninvited and the illegal.
The first advice that families get when they go for credit counseling is to surrender or burn
their credit cards. It will require hard bargaining to renegotiate their existing debts, but doing
so is pointless unless they renounce deficit spending. The same principal must apply to the
government. They need to stop whining about the national deficit when they continue to
make it worse. How much is spent on congressional travel abroad, on elaborate state
dinners, on wining and dining even minor dignitaries of foreign countries? It's more than
you think. It all has to stop!
Congressmen should be nationally rated and publicly humiliated over the non-essential
pork barrel earmarks they demand. If a road needs fixing and the state can't do it, or a
bridge is about to collapse, then by all means fund the repairs. But a Woodstock museum?
A hundred memorials to people few have ever heard of and even less care about? A so
called "community organizing" organization that registers dead and fictitious people to
vote? Get real!
We need to cut back the space program, What difference does it make if China beats us
to Mars while we're going bankrupt? One presidential candidate plans to give $50B to
the United Nations for global poverty. How can we do that when the clock on Social
Security insolvency is ticking? Liberals want to create one welfare state giveaway after
another, without requiring any work in return. If we have to pay out welfare benefits,
why can't the recipients do some of the "unskilled labor" that some argue requires
tolerance of illegal immigrants. I have to earn what I get. Why can't they? It is the
"something for nothing" mentality that created the subprime mortgage crisis. Not only
does that have to stop, but all of its successor giveaways have to stop as well.
If you want to fund research, fine. Fund only that which contributes to clean, renewable
energy, hardcore health issues like cancer, HIV, heart disease, diabetes, etc., healthcare
and immigration reform and that's all.
High on the list of things I would NOT do are increasing taxes during a recession, try
to fool taxpares by giving them a small tax break while raising taxes on those with whom
they must do business resulting in a net loss, raise taxes the very businesses we need to create
new jobs, increase capital gains taxes on people whose portfolios are taking one huge hit after
another, give $50 billion to the do-nothing, American hating United Nations, and try to
fund a universal healthcare boondoggle while the economy is cratering around me. Oh,
I'm sorry. That's the very platform of the presidential candidate the media says is most
trusted by Americans to "handle" the economy. Would that be like Tony Rezko "handled"
public funds, or like William Ayers "defended the constitution," or like Jeremiah Wright
"loves America?" But I digress.
Suffice it to say that while the scale differences between your average family and the
United States government are massively different, the principles of fiscal responsibility
are not. If we don't elect a president and a congress -- the poeple who are minding the
shop -- who understand that we are playng the end game and that it's time for drastic
measures that DO NOT include any more $700B bailouts, in four years 1929 may
actually be looking pretty good.