The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour
March 6, 2007: Our Rotary Club was most fortunate today to have with us four major officers of The Concord Coalition, who are currently on a nation-wide tour to promote fiscal responsibility. They came to us from a feature presentation last Sunday on 60 Minutes.
The opening speaker was the Controller General of the United States, David Walker who challenged all voters to ask the many candidates running for the Presidency of the United States if they truly understand the magnitude of the fiscal problems facing the nation. The three big entitlements: Social Security, Medicare and Medicade are currently taking 40% of the national budget and the “baby boomer” generation has yet to receive these services. To add to this burden, the cost of health care is exceeding the speed of growth of the economy. Our current pathway of fiscal spending is unsustainable. We cannot “grow out of” this situation. We need a true bi-partisan approach to the solution for it is more than a fiscal issue; it is a moral issue.
Robert Bixby, Executive Director of the Concord Coalition forcefully noted that our officials must seek TRUTH. He felt that we have a national deficit in leadership at this time. Our leadership generation is the first to be on the verge of leaving the country worse off than they found it. We are headed for an unprecedented deficit, a deficit fueled heavily by health care costs and entitlement spending, spending which has increased two and a half times in the past six years. We must start corrective action SOONER, not LATER for we are currently the world’s largest debtor. The issue is stewardship and what we are doing to the future of our grandchildren.
Alison Fraser spoke of concern that we are borrowing so much from foreigners for we are living at their whims of investment, and they are reaping the profits. We can contain the problem in the short term, but overall the issue is getting worse and worse.
Doug Elmendorf warned that Federal spending is currently consuming 20% of the Gross National Product and headed for being 50%. We have three choices: Do nothing; Increase taxes [which currently amount to about 18%, but would have to go to 30% to pull us out, an amount that cannot be sustained]; Control spending. The solution rests in taking on all issues and bringing that out in the open for discussion. We need to broaden the tax rate, not simple raise it.
Submitted by Fred Sales, Keyway Committee