In the recent election a strong message was set to the US Government. That message was not that the Republicans should return to power or that the Democrats should be removed from power. That message, I believe, was that Democrats and Republicans need to stop playing the same game that they have been playing with each other and with the public. When it comes to fiscal policy, both parties agree that there should be a balanced budget, but for both parties it is a much lower priority than their other financial plans.
Republicans want to decrease taxes or at the very least not raise them. Democrats want to expand services or at the very least not cut them back. Each party has been ever more willing, especially in recent years, to rack up large deficits rather than go against their preferences. That is what has to stop. We are no longer in a position to keep compromising by just building up debt. Services need to be cut and taxes are going to have to increase. For too long we have been compromising by increasing debt. That policy needs to end. What I, and I believe most voters want is for this country's leadership to show some fiscal responsibility for a change. We didn't have that under the Bush administration and we don't have it under the Obama administration.
Democrats have been arguing that their spending programs will help the economy recover. They believe that without government spending things would be worse. They might even be correct. Experts wildly disagree on the subject. What they don't disagree on, however, is that large scale deficit spending is very harmful. Our current policies have been trading certain future wealth for a possible short term gain. While the idea is to take from a plentiful future and help ease a troubled present, there are no assurances. We don't know that we can afford to take from the future. We don't know how much the spending will help the present. Worst of all, we don't know when or how things will change. How long can or will the spending go on? How many of the jobs created by unsustainable spending will be temporary? Will the economy recover in time to take up the slack for decreased spending or will this spending only postpone and possibly worsen a recession? Many negative effects are likely or certain, but the positives appear to be highly speculative.
Many Republican plans are no better. Cutting taxes might help the private sector to grow the economy, but it will certainly result in increasing deficits now which leads to all of the same negatives of the Democrats plans for all of the same reasons. We don't have any more certainty that the positive effects of providing more money to the private sector will outweigh the costs than we do that direct spending will. Either way we are betting probable short term positives against certain long term costs. That is a poor investment.
Instead, we need to show fiscal restraint and responsibility. Even a good investment is not a good investment if we cannot afford it. There is always an element of risk and if you cannot afford to lose you should not play. Some deficit spending is worth the risk, as you can often have investments which pay out higher than the cost of borrowing to invest. Taking that too far, however, leads to disaster.
Both parties have worked to bring us where we are today, which is with massive debt which is growing at an astonishing rate. We have been living too far beyond our means for too long. The unfortunate reality is that we have been gambling that we could continue to outgrow our current debt with future revenues for far too long. We have lost sight of financial responsibility and have instead grown accustom to living outside our means. We need to correct that, and it isn't going to be pleasant.
For some time, I have been advocating that while compromise in politics is often a good thing, that it is also often very bad. I have applauded the fact the Republicans refused to be bargained into most of the spending programs for the past couple of years. As I saw it, the current administration was going down the same spending path as the previous one, only faster. I felt it was the wrong direction and so I encouraged an end to compromise to stop the out of control spending.
In that, I have been wrong. It had been bothering me for a bit, because I don't like the idea of not working in cooperation to make things better. I like the idea of compromise in most situations where people disagree and yet I was seeing a lot of damage come from compromises made between the parties. The problem is not compromise, the problem is the type of compromise. Rather than compromise by each party pursuing its primary fiscal goals, we need to compromise first on pursuing the shared goal of limited deficit spending and reducing the debt. Working within that shared goal we need to make sacrifices in our non-shared, but individually higher priorities.
Taxes need to be raised. Spending has to be cut. We need to shift away from the compromise of double spending and instead compromise on double cutting. Our government cannot afford to offer all of the services we enjoy at the tax rate we have. Increasing taxes will only get us so far, cutting services will eventually be far too harmful. It is in this that we need to compromise with each other and work opposing each other in the details but together in the common goal of bringing this country back into a fiscally responsible path.
That is the message I believe the voters have sent in this recent election, and it is a message that I hope both parties come to hear. We are willing to have fewer services if it means more financial responsibility. We are willing to pay more taxes, if it also comes with more financial responsibility. We are not willing to let the parties gamble with our futures with the costly and risky plans that they have been proposing and implementing so far. There may be some short term pain, but it is largely a cost of letting things get so far out of hand for so long.
We can get this country back on track, and the answer isn't to follow the ideological path of either party, but rather to shift the give and take of compromise which cause us each to sacrifice a little for the sake of financial responsibility rather than each of us gain a little borrowing against our future.
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