The guilty Americans

“We cannot trade irresponsible Democrat leaders for Republican leaders we don’t have complete confidence in,” said Todd Young, a Bloomington attorney running for Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, at the IU College Republicans callout meeting.

It was a jab at former Rep. Mike Sodrel who is running against Young in the Republican primary. This is Sodrel’s fifth chance to challenge Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., for the seat whose district covers Bloomington and much of southern Indiana.

Young called the Republican-controlled Congress in which Sodrel served the most fiscally irresponsible, second only to the current one.

But Young didn’t offer specifics about how he would have done better, just the usual talk about outrageous earmarks and bloated budgets.

That is probably because spending growth was driven by popular initiatives including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the expansion of prescription drug benefits for seniors, and the waging of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Americans were happy to get a tax cut even while they accepted these expansions of the state.

It is easy to pick on political leaders for our long-term fiscal problems, but the American people are hardly innocent. They have consistently elected politicians who promise low taxes and plenty of benefits.

Most Republicans hoping for a win in 2010 seem happy to play along yet again.

Americans certainly do care about the deficit, but they also seem to think most of what the government spends is wasted.

In fact, most money is spent on tangible benefits for people who will fight to keep the money flowing. The two programs that dominate the federal budget, Social Security and Medicare, end up redistributing large amounts of wealth to the middle class.

Both programs face serious problems. Demographic shifts and increases in life expectancy mean Social Security will have fewer workers paying to support more seniors enjoying decade-long retirements.

Medicare faces the same demographic pressures on top of rising health care costs.

Neither party has done much to solve these problems. President Barack Obama is dodging fiscal issues with a spending freeze exempting most of the budget. Democratic health care bills would do little to control costs.

Republicans, who are hoping to win on the issue of fiscal responsibility, haven’t offered much better.

They took a stand against the stimulus but proposed their own version loaded with tax cuts priced at hundreds of billions of dollars.

Besides, the current deficit is the wrong focus. Much of it results from declining revenues. Few economists, whether they think spending or tax cuts will better spur recovery, argue against running deficits in a recession.

Some Republicans have tried to tackle the sustainability of current programs. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has proposed replacing Medicare with vouchers for private insurance.Indexed to inflation, these vouchers would grow more slowly than health care costs and would incentivize seniors to be more conscious of their health care spending.

This might not be the best solution, but it does acknowledge the tough choices ahead.
Voters will need to acknowledge those choices too.


E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu