Reconsidering America’s Sacred Cows

The United States is riding an outdated economic model to oblivion. This is primarily due to the role our sacred cows play in our way of thinking. With apologies to vegetarians, it is time to sacrifice those sacred cows.

World Wars and Depressions

The first part of the twentieth century had such an impact on the United States that we often don’t recognize the changes that came around and still impact us today. A brutal depression resulted in New Deal economics that led to the creation of programs like Social Security and Medicare. World War II presented us with the question of whether we should be isolationist or not and we chose not. These two events arguably sent us to great heights over the next fifty years, but are now leading us to the road to ruin.

War!

Let’s start with the most obvious example. When faced with a future of either being an isolationist country like China or acting as the world’s policeman, we chose the policeman’s role. In the short term, this was good as we played a major role in foiling the Nazis and Japanese while winning a subsequent cold war against the USSR. It was all glorious, but we spent untold amounts of money doing it.

Flash forward to the current day and what do we find? We’ve been in Iraq and Afghanistan for roughly 10 years each. The debate between President Bush and John Kerry over the amount that would be spent on the wars was whether we would reach $200 billion. Kerry was certain we would and Bush thought it would top out around $100. Well, 10 years later we find that we’ve spent a staggering $1.235 TRILLION dollars.

And for what?

There is nobody who thinks Afghanistan is going to end well. We can pacify areas, but the Taliban come back in a soon as we leave. We’ve been there 10 years and nothing has really changed. Do you think we could have spent the $444 billion spent on that war for domestic needs? I do.

Then there is Iraq. It is better than Afghanistan, but only marginally so. As I write this, a string of bombs have exploded across Iraq killing many. This is pretty much par for the course, but many Americans think the country is doing well. It isn’t. The only difference is the American media has stopped reporting on the war.

You can think whatever you like about the wars. We could debate the merits of each all day long. The bigger issue, however, is do we need to be the world’s policeman any longer? We have a defense budget in the $600 billion range, which is 6 times bigger than any other country. In fact, it is more than ALL the other countries combined. Yes, this includes China, a country that has never shown an expansionist policy in its long history.

The military is one of our sacred cows. We need to slay it. What we need is a military force that can defend US. We don’t need bases in Europe. Why are they there? Are we expecting the Swiss to attack Denmark? I propose we cut back our military to one that protects us domestically and only steps into international conflicts when serious situations such as the Nazis develop. If we cut our defense budget in half, we would still have triple the budget of China and be able to pay the interest on our national debt while funding infrastructure repairs we desperately need.

Entitlements

Now we get to the other sacred cows of the American way of life – Medicare and its ilk as well as Social Security. While cutting the military can be difficult because it is seen as not being patriotic to do so, entitlements are even harder to go after because older voters love them. Still, let’s start with Social Security since it is the easiest.

Social Security

Social Security is a wasteful program, one that runs in the red, right? Ummm, no. Not by a long shot. In fact, Social Security has run a surplus nearly every year until 2008 when Baby Boomers started drawing on it big time. Okay, then where is the money? You are going to love this. They politicians in Washington have been swiping the surplus every year and using it for their pet projects while giving the Social Security trust funds IOUs. Now that the population bulge known as the Baby Boomers is causing the trust funds to pay out more than they take in, Congress doesn’t have the money to pay the IOUs.

And people wonder why we are in such a huge mess.

There are three steps necessary to keep Social Security alive. The first is to bar Congress from swiping any more money. The second is to force Congress to pay back what it owes. Since that will never happen, we need a third step to save the program. It is simple. We need to raise the qualifying age for the program into the 72 to 74 range over the next 10 years. Social Security has never been adjusted for our increased life spans. If we make the necessary adjustment, it will help right the fiscal ship.

Then there is a fourth step that is going to be very controversial. Social Security should be available to folks who need it. People who have over a million dollars saved for retirement or some other large figure, don’t need it. It is that simple. We need to develop a means test to cut people with more than a certain dollar amount out of the program. It isn’t like they need the $1,000 a month check!

Medicare

Medicare is often described as a typical liberal program. It started out that way, but Republicans have given it steroids with the crime against nature known as the prescription plan care of the clueless George Bush. Whatever your politics, there is plenty of blame to go around.

So, how do we deal with Medicare? It is by far the biggest expenditure we have in the next 30 years. Baby Boomers are getting old and using the system like mad. We need to be vigilant in dealing with this expense while making sure people get the care they need. So, let’s look at some ways to do this and the one hard issue that we must come to an agreement on.

The first issue is waste. Medicare wastes money to the tune of $100 billion a year. If we can eliminate this, we would save over a trillion dollars in a decade. That’s a lot of money. The key is to get better monitoring of the billing in the system. There needs to be clear charges for certain services and there needs to be a hoard of auditors going into hospitals and doctor’s practices to run the books. We should also penalize clear fraudsters by hitting them with criminal charges and revoking their licenses.

Next we need to determine what kind of care we can expect under Medicare. In a perfect world, we would all get all the care we need. We don’t live in a perfect world. I don’t have an answer for this one, but we need to come to some kind of understanding as a nation. Is Medicare going to cover emergency situations only and leave the cost of basic check ups to individuals? If not, are we willing to raise takes to pay for the full service plan? There is no easy answer, but we can come to a consensus as a nation.

Then we get to the biggest issue. The amount of money spent by Medicare on medical services rendered in the last two years of life is obscene. If the cost was merely the same as in other years, we would largely solve the Medicare budget problem. Before you scream about death panels, let’s be clear what we are talking about here. My grandmother had cancer and was dying at the age of 87. She chose to not do chemo because she wanted to spend the last year of her laugh happy instead of puking her guts out. It was a difficult decision, but one I respected. When she went into the hospital for the last time, the doctors were running x-rays, MRIs, CAT scans and so on. All she wanted was pain meds to minimize her discomfort, but they kept trying to treat a TERMINALLY ILL patient who had already made here decision. It was a huge waste of money for treatments that she did not want!

I am not suggesting that we cut off medical care for anyone in the last year or two of their lives. I am suggesting, however, that we moderate that care where there is no chance of survival or the patient wants to die peacefully and with dignity. Is that too much to ask? Perhaps it is in your opinion. Okay, then are you willing to pay taxes at a 50 percent level? This is pretty much what the choice boils down to.

Other Spending Cuts

What about all the other programs we could cut? Where’s the bridge to nowhere? How about NASA? Well, the truth of the matter is these programs don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to the programs above. You could eliminate all government spending besides the military, Medicare and Social Security, and we would still run an annual deficit. If we are going to fix our debt problem, we have to deal with these three subjects. Anything else is just spitting in the wind.

So, can we do it? Can we actually face up to our problems and come up with a solution? Yes and no. The recent debt negotiations tell you everything you need to know about the political problems in Washington. The only way this issue will be resolved is if one party takes control of Congress and the White House. Many thought Obama would deal with it when he came into office, but he blew it. Things now seem to be moving towards the right, but Republicans have proven to be just as wasteful when they’ve controlled the government [See the Bush Years.].

Unfortunately, I think we mostly have cowards as leaders these days. There is no JFK or Ronald Regan out there. Instead, we have President Obama, Boehner, Perry and Bachman types and that is a real tragedy because it suggests these problems will only really be dealt with when a crisis hits. History has shown that when a debt crisis hits a country, it is already too late to deal with it. If you don’t believe me, look up the history of the Argentina debt collapse or Germany’s issues in the early 1900s or how the Roman Empire finally collapsed. I pray the United States will not be added to this list, but it doesn’t look good at the moment.

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