Americans remain in denial
Published 12:01 am Sunday, April 24, 2011
Don’t cut my Medicare. Keep your mitts off Medicaid. Leave the Pentagon budget alone. And don’t you dare raise my taxes.
Oh, and knock off all that deficit spending, will ya?
No wonder politicians seem to be paddling in circles in Washington, D.C. A majority of those they represent refuse to come to grips with the nation’s worsening fiscal crisis. It can’t be solved without shared sacrifice — a trait that for previous generations was as American as the Fourth of July.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week showed that by an overwhelming margin (78 percent), Americans oppose cutting spending on Medicare, the medical insurance program for seniors whose runaway costs, economists agree, are unsustainable. And 69 percent oppose cutting Medicaid, the program that serves the poor and is also bleeding red ink. The majority that opposes cutting defense spending is narrower (56 percent), but it’s still a majority.
When asked whether they’d support a combination of small tax increases and small benefit cuts to help reduce the debt, 53 percent said no.
The one deficit-reduction tool most of us can get behind? Taxing the rich more. Not only did 72 percent overall support that idea, even 54 percent of Republicans did. Even if such attitudes prod congressional Republicans to bend a little on taxes, though, it’s just a small piece of the much bigger solution that’s needed.
Standard & Poor’s, that big bestower of credit ratings, fired a warning shot across America’s fiscal bow last week, lowering its outlook on U.S. debt from “stable” to “negative” and threatening to lower the nation’s sterling, AAA bond rating. That would increase the cost of borrowing for everyone (including the government), slow or stop economic growth and put a painful dent in most Americans’ standard of living.
The task of persuading Americans that this problem is real falls principally to President Obama and leaders in Congress, but they seem more interested in pointing fingers and scoring political points than in serious bipartisan engagement. In the meantime, a New York Times-CBS News poll showed last week, Americans’ pessimism about the nation’s direction is growing. Rapidly.
The wakeup call from Standard & Poor’s should serve as a call to responsible action. Heck, it should serve as a call to patriotism, a recognition that this nation’s mounting debt truly is an existential threat.
It’s a realization more Americans need to share. If we don’t, if we continue to believe we can enjoy penthouse benefits at basement prices, we’ll all share the consequences.
