Headed toward the cliff

In his State of the Union speech last month – and on other occasions, of late – President Obama lectured Americans like a schoolmarm, insisting it’s time to cut federal spending and deficits. Then last week, without any noticeable squawk, the president signed legislation lifting the cap on government debt from $12.4 trillion to $14.3 trillion.

Trillion.

Someone has a problem, and they’re not facing up to it.

Add up the payments Uncle Sam has promised to dole out under Social Security, Medicare and other "entitlement" schemes. Add interest payments on a national debt that now exceeds $12.3 trillion. What you get is a number that will gobble up 80 percent of all federal revenues by 2020, government economists project.

Moody’s Investors Service recently warned that Washington’s credit rating could be in jeopardy if the nation’s finances don’t improve. Really? It "could be"? Would these guys sell us an insurance policy on the Titanic, or do they think the liner "could be" at risk?

Many on the statist side of the aisle say the answer is higher taxes "on the rich." Leaving aside any philosophical objections to the notion that "getting rich" is an offense that deserves punishment, seizing all the wealth of the top 1 or 2 percent of wealthiest Americans would feed the government beast for little more than a year – and you can’t go back to the well once you’ve destroyed your victims.

No, the only answer is the same answer the European Economic Community is now prescribing for deficit wastrels such as Greece, if they want to avoid being thrown out of the "Euro" union – trim your spending by 3 percent this year and 8 percent next year.

Many of our legislative leaders have been in Washington for 30 years. It’s not like they weren’t warned. They’ve known this was coming for decades. But they always assumed, "I’ll be dead by then, anyway."

Notice a lot of the old rats abandoning ship, declaring they don’t see any need to run again? Why do you think that is?

The Social Security system, the biggest social spending program in the world, has begun paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes. Medicare, the health care program that now covers 45 million elderly and disabled people, is in even worse shape. Its trust fund is projected to run out of money in seven years.

The budget President Obama submitted to Congress this month proposes record spending of $3.8 trillion for 2011. Taxes in next year’s budget will support only $2.5 trillion of that, leaving another $1.3 trillion – trillion – to be borrowed.

Such numbers make the Reagan-era deficits look like the pocket change you get back after buying a hot dog and a Coke.

The spendaholics are about to polish off that bottle of gin they’ve got hidden under the bathroom sink, back the SUV out of the garage and drive off the bridge. Welcome aboard.