You know them by their righteousness:
* The politicians on this flank say: It’s natural for government to grow when people’s needs grow. If only we raise more tax revenue, we can afford to be the truly great society. And why do you over there frighten citizens with your talk of “reforming” their entitlement programs? If we keep spending now to ease our pain and buy more economic growth, then we can address our deficits and debt.
* The politicians on the other flank say: Without your drunken spending spree, there would be no hangover, no need for austerity. More borrowing would be immoral: Two generations of young taxpayers already are doomed to decades of paying off debts created by their parents and grandparents. Yet you over there want more stimulus programs? Why, because the last ones worked so well?
America is a nation divided, riven by ideological schism and subject to leaders who, faced with a crisis, maneuver and stall. Nothing changes a verdict we offered Nov. 6 in the first installment of this occasional editorial series: Some days it seems that either major party would gleefully let the United States implode if it could grab a moment’s political advantage over the other.
The next Nov. 6 is the Election Day when voters will, we hope, tell Washington what to do about deficits and debt. Our national division over that question is bad enough; the resulting policy deadlock is a dangerous luxury Americans no longer can afford. Why not? Look around:
No, the dueling camps of righteous pols paraphrased above aren’t … ours. They are combatants in a European conflict: Now they’re fiercely debating anew how to rescue their continent from a diabolical trap of — Oops — their own making.
This is a brutal time for our friends and allies one ocean to the east. For Americans of every political tilt, though, this is a chance to see our future — or to learn on the cheap how we can escape the fate of those anguished friends and allies.
Remember as you read on, though: Every minute of every day, federal taxpayers in this country borrow another $3 million. With Washington running its fourth trillion-dollar deficit in four years, those taxpayers soon will owe a total of $16 trillion — an amount larger than the U.S. gross domestic product: As of now, we owe more than everything we produce in a year.
Where will this fast and furious pace of spending (entitlements are our biggest category) and borrowing (the Chinese are our biggest creditors) deliver us?
The Europeans went decades without asking themselves that question. As they took on more debt, much of it for fabulously generous social programs, interest payments eclipsed the ability of governments to comfortably meet them. Now rescue schemes are forcing those governments to do what their weak self-discipline never could: cut spending. Because those governments are huge players in their domestic economies, cutbacks choke growth. In the turmoil:
* Britain has double-dipped back into recession. Recession also grips Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and the Czech Republic.
* With Monday’s resignation of its prime minister, the Netherlands, the eurozone’s fifth-biggest economy, is the sixth nation to see the crisis defrock its leader.
* In Spain, where unemployment approaches 25 percent, the potential need for a massive European Union bailout has grown so great that dark wits are calling the country “too big to save” — a play on banks once thought “too big to fail.”
* In France, Socialist challenger Francois Hollande is favored to take the presidency from Nicolas Sarkozy, who has supported German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s insistence on eurozone austerity to reduce nations’ debts; Hollande exploits anti-German resentments by saying the French Resistance inspires him.
* Portugal’s bonds now are rated as junk.
* And while some politicians call for a reversal of austerity policies, with more government borrowing and spending, German central bank chief Jens Weidmann nailed the tendency of pols to weasel out of budget restraints: “If policymakers think they can avoid this (debt reduction), they will try to,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s why the pressure has to be kept up.”
What about the pressure here at home? Trustees warned last week that by 2024, Medicare will exhaust its trust fund; the Social Security fund will be empty by 2033. At those points, benefits drop to whatever levels taxpayers can support year to year. Yet House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan earns scorn from opponents for cloaking his proposed Medicare reforms in harsh truths: “This plan is about putting an end to empty promises from a bankrupt government.”
What most aggravates us isn’t this or that proposal for addressing debt — slash spending? raise taxes? — but the refusal of both major parties to do much more than posture to the body politic.
Whatever the policy answer for this country, Europe ought to be an urgent, five-alarm warning of what happens when debts blithely rise and lenders, fearing default, get frightened. Europe’s crisis has devolved into the austerity-versus-spending battle in which no economic flower can bloom. Is that the future we Americans want to import? And if not, then why don’t our leaders act while they still can shape our fate?
Imagine what would happen if Washington surprised us. If Republicans and Democrats realized how their election-year game of chicken deters growth — business expansion, job creation. If leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House admitted: We can soak in the same cold bath as Europe. Or we can make our debt stop growing right now.
Imagine, too, the gratitude from a nation still divided, but closer to solvent.
