Originally published in the Jackson Star Tribune on December 21, 2019
In 2011 Donald Trump tweeted: “The Debt Limit cannot be raised until Obama spending is contained…I cannot believe Republicans are extending the debt ceiling — I am a Republican & I am embarrassed.”
After last week’s budget agreement, I too am embarrassed for my party, and see the only solution to Congress’ failure to make hard political decisions is congressional term limits. Principally because the situation is far worse than we are being told and the stakes much higher than career politicians want us to believe. Congress’s political cowardice puts in jeopardy our country’s ability to meet our promises to military and private sector retirees and will rob the next generation of the economic opportunities our parents gave to us.
Our country is flat broke, and here are the five most important things you should know that our senators and members of Congress won’t tell us:
First, Congress and the President are cooking the books. The quoted debt of $23 trillion is a lie, and every Congressperson and senator are in on it.
The Treasury Department is required to issue an annual financial statement, which reveals our politicians are hiding from Americans trillions of dollars of off-the-books obligations. If we include our unfunded obligations to Social Security, Medicare, and our military retirement programs, the Treasury’s own number is an additional $47 trillion dollars.
Second, nearly $6 trillion of our national debt is borrowed from Social Security, Medicare and military retirement programs which are temporarily overfunded. In the next eleven years those programs will need that money back in order to meet their obligations.
Third, our government has no plan on how to repay the $6 trillion when it comes due or how to fund the additional $47 trillion they have hidden from us. Make no mistake, this is money that will be needed by millions of retirees to heat their homes and pay their grocery bills.
Fourth, forty percent of the money we borrow comes from foreign governments and investors — China being the largest. Unless we act soon, we will enter this fiscal crisis with China as our largest single creditor.
Because we need their loans more than they need our soybeans, it won’t matter what trade deal we come up with today. In a dozen years they will be able to strike any deal they want.
Fifth, at a time when interest rates are at historical lows and the economy is booming, this country can’t pay its bills. That should scare us because when interest rates return to historical averages (which they eventually will) our interest expense will exceed our entire military budget, and when the economy takes a pause, our already climbing deficit will explode.
By any reasonable measure our country is flat broke, and these five facts are known to every senator and congressperson. In about a dozen years working families with real bills to pay are going to be told that our nation cannot keep the promises we made because today’s politicians are more anxious about their reelection prospects than their responsibilities as public servants.
As if we needed more evidence that we need term limits, in a June phone call to President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the President that no politician ever lost office by spending more money. Sadly, the women and men in the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are addicted to a false sense of power, because they use their authority not to serve Wyoming families but to fly first-class, make appearances on cable TV and wave to us at parades. Since I see no world where that will change, this budget deal makes one of the best arguments for term limits.