Of Cliffs and Cartoons

My email inbox is a mix of electronic versions of newspapers, newsletters (Drudge and Huffington), and amalgamations of news stories such as The Daily Beast’s “Cheat Sheet”, as well as The Atlantic’s “Long Reads”. With no exceptions, each one of those email’s lead story was something concerning how we as a country have managed to avoid the looming “fiscal cliff”. Apparently, enough of our lawmakers cut short their ridiculously long Christmas breaks in order to prevent taxes from rising on every single American who takes home a paycheck. As it stands now, only individuals making more than $400,000 and couples making more than $450,000 will see their tax rates rise from 35% to 39.6%. The rest of us have dodged the label of nouveau pauvre once again, or have we? I would submit that the “Fiscal Cliff” debate is nonsense of the sort only Wile E. Coyote and the Acme Corporation can provide. The problem with government is spending beyond its means, and that is as it always has been.


The federal government has almost always spent more than it took in. In 1914, the first full year after ratification of the 16th Amendment, (which authorized Congress to tax both individuals and businesses), government revenue was $725,000,000 and spending was $726,000,000. There was a period from 1920 through 1930 during which we actually spent less than we took in, but that is decidedly not the norm. Other than the surplus years 1998 through 2001, there has never been more than a year here and a year there where the government spent less money than it actually had in the coffers. If you or I spent more than 50% above our income for years on end we would have been arrested, tried and convicted for fraud by now. In Washington, D.C. that’s just called deficit spending.

I may be in the minority here, but I don’t want taxes to be raised on anyone. A check of the White House website http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals shows tables relating to what the government takes in and what it lays out. In a preposterously government-ese link named SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS, OUTLAYS, AND SURPLUSES OR DEFICITS the money which comes in, and almost immediately goes out, is broken down from 1789 through projections for 2017. In 2009 we took in $2,104,900,000,000 and spent $3,517,600,000,000. In 2010 the numbers were $2,162,700,000,000 and $3,456,200,000,000 respectively and the numbers for 2011 are $2,303,500,000,000 and $3,603,100,000,000. Once the final numbers for the just ended 2012 are released, there is simply no reason to believe we will not continue the trend of ever higher spending, no matter what revenue is generated. In fact, we should all expect the deficits to continue their historical march onward and upwards.


A couple of the lesser mentioned aspects of the deal are that the debt ceiling will not be addressed and the federal payroll tax holiday will be allowed to expire. The former is attached to the $110,000,000,000 in automatic spending cuts which have been delayed for two months. As for the latter, well you didn’t actually think that the only tax which truly affects everyone who works could be rescinded did you? After all, that pesky 47% of people that Mitt Romney referenced can’t be allowed to get off scott free, not now that the election is done. Somehow our government has become addicted to spending and, even with Scrooge McDuck-like buckets of money in play nothing appears to be able to stem the tide of red ink. No matter how much money the politicians in Washington have in which to swim, they will always find ways to spend that and lots more.


Government has always been too big and just keeps getting bigger. Check out any two subsequent years of the federal budget and you will see that it never goes down. Each and every year someone else in Congress adds a pet project or 6 into the document and we get bridges to nowhere, swine odor and manure management research, water taxi service to places with zero residents, and multiple millions of dollars for an indoor rain forest in Iowa. Therein lays the actual problem. As long as the august men and women in Congress are allowed to add earmarks, without repercussion, they will, because it benefits them come election time. How else can a body politic with single digit approval ratings see 90% of incumbents re-elected? I have personally seen and heard politicians of both parties say things like, “Well, Congress may only have an 18% approval rating, but polls show my ratings are 45% favorable.” Why the seeming disconnect? Because millions of dollars for the World Toilet Summit benefit the voters in his or her district of course and jobs back home equal votes.


The theatrical façade of doomsday predictions concerning this cliff or that precipice will continue unabated until we quite literally break the bank and riots of the current Greek variety consume the streets of American cities. As long as politicians can write bigger checks for pet projects than their checking account would seem to allow, they will. That’s where true leadership and legislation should be found. Instead of squabbling over how much the wealthy will, or should pay, we should all be discussing how to stop spending money we simply do not have. It should be the type of discussion that goes on over my coffee table or your couch. How many of us have had the conversation with the spouse concerning just what we won’t buy this month? All of you reading this I would bet.


So, what to do you ask? Should we all become doomsday preppers and stock up on food, water and ammunition for our self sustaining bunkers? That’s one idea I guess, but I am of the belief that if enough of us make time to let our Senators and representatives know what we want, we can change the course of the nation and right the ship. We need an immediate freeze on discretionary spending, actual reform on entitlement spending, some sort of balanced budget spending legislation, the termination of redundant and/or un-necessary programs, and serious, grown up talk on the privatization of other programs.


But wait! I can hear you yelling. That means talks about the sacred cows of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as well as the political death knells of unemployment compensation, food stamps and agricultural price support programs. Any politician who even suggests cuts to these third rail programs is assured of a landslide defeat in his next election. Unfortunately for whomever that may be, that is precisely what some brave politicians, who never saw Congress as a lifetime gig anyway, need to do. Serious discussions on allowing me and those behind me in the retirement queue to have some say in our retirement need to take place. At roughly 21% of the federal budget, Social Security is the single largest slice in the budget pie. Since there is not now, nor has there ever been a “lock box” for Social Security, funding that slice takes actual money, but the Social Security trust fund only consists of Treasury securities. This means that the taxes collected under the Social Security payroll tax, which since 1969 have been designated as part of the unified budget, are in effect being lent to the federal government to be expended for whatever present purposes the government requires


It is in those “present purposes” wherein the problem exists. Since, by law, monies collected through taxes cannot be separated from the budget, Social Security is only adequately funded through 2026. What happens after that? Nobody actually knows for certain. It just depends upon what Congress is doing concerning the red and black ink of outlays and revenues. What is for certain is that kicking the can down the road continuously will eventually yield unpleasant results. Whether that is the emergence of a third political party, some form of isolationism, outright anarchy in the streets, some combination of all three, or none of them remains to be seen. All that is for certain is that the results will eventually be, at the least, unpleasant for many and, at the worst, painful for us all.


I am fairly certain that, after 1,200 words give or take, my thesis statement for this piece is sound. I am also fairly certain that most of you believe government spends too much money on frivolous and inane things. The sticking point lies in what each of us consider frivolous and/or inane and what we think should be done. I am most fond of my Super Genius tattoo, which resides directly beneath an image of old Wile E. Coyote falling through space. I am that type of Super Genius. The Rube Goldberg complex contraptions which I construct, usually in my mind, never seem to work as well in practice as they did in theory. Being that old Wile E. and I are kindred souls, I do not truly have a cut and dried answer to what needs to be eliminated and what should stay, but some projects and even departments need to go.


Unfortunately, Congress is currently awash in Acme mail order contraptions like Bat Suits, exploding tennis balls, Do-it-Yourself Tornado kits, rocket skates and the ubiquitous Acme American Anvil. While Wile E. can drop an order form into a mailbox, or enter an order into a website, and have the requested items delivered from Acme’s headquarters in Fairfield, NJ in seconds, Congress cannot expect any such miracles in unraveling the Gordian Knot of their own making. They can however, employ an Alexander the Great type solution and cut through it now. If history is any indicator though, that will not happen.


I am more expectant that one by one our elected officials will don the Acme Bat Suit, leap from the cliff and, after one or two swipes of the outfit’s wings, plummet straight into the ground, after which, as they unsteadily regain their feet, an anvil will promptly appear from the heavens and squash them into the dirt. The failures of the Acme products always leave old Wile E. more humiliated than harmed. Failures in Congress, as we all know though, leave the politicians neither humiliated, nor harmed and the Coyote’s greatest enemy, gravity, seems to have no effect on politicians at all. Congress is a body of true fanatics with whom only Wile E. can compare because both continue to, in the words of George Santayana, redouble their efforts when they have forgotten their aim.


That attitude has gotten us where we are now and one of these public servants needs to put on their big boy or girl panties, throw off the Acme Corporation livery and read the fine print on the order forms. For there, as any Looney Tunes aficionado can tell you, are the words that could finally cause our friend the Coyote to expire: Acme is A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of Roadrunner Corporation and a more apt analogy for the current financial morass one simply will not find.