Among the most urgent of government priorities as we begin the new year is to address the skyrocketing national debt. Unless we act now to live within our means, our future as a great nation will be in serious jeopardy. And we need to accept that we cannot simply tax or inflate our way out—history demonstrates that this makes matters worse. Serious reductions in government spending are needed.
They will be painful, and the pain must be shared, but horizontal, across-the-board reductions in which every government program, department, or agency is cut by a set percentage is not efficient, nor are such reductions likely to be permanent. They have a way of regenerating when no one is looking. Instead, we must look for entire functions, departments, and agencies to eliminate. Do we, for example, really need the Departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs? Can these functions not be returned to the Department of Defense? Do we really need a U.S. Department of Education? Isn’t education policy best left to state and local governments?
As citizens, we need to scale down our expectations and demands on government. In the United States, a capitalist democracy, government’s primary responsibility is to protect citizens from foreign and domestic violence, not care for them from cradle to grave. We cannot afford all the entitlements we have lavished on ourselves since the days of the New Deal, on top of the new ones that expanded healthcare will shortly bring. It is next to impossible to take benefits away from those who are already relying on them or are about to. However, we must act now to scale back the promises we are making to future beneficiaries.
We are living longer, healthier lives; therefore, we can and should raise retirement ages, at least for those who are, say, 15 years away from the current retirement age. We should raise the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare benefits. And we should make those changes effective now, not at some time in the distant future.
Retirement plans for most government workers are clearly more generous than those in the private sector. The rationale for this has been lower government pay scales than in the public sector. This disparity has long since ceased to exist, and adjustments are in order for all new hires, effective now—with exceptions only for the military, first responders, and others whose careers involve great risk, extensive separation from family, and/or age restrictions on length of service. With regard to the latter, military policies mandating retirement for the purpose of increasing promotion and command opportunity are wasteful of talent and experience, contribute to retirement costs, and should be revised in view of the fact that people are living and staying fit longer.
In searching for areas to cut, defense spending, which accounts for nearly a fifth of federal expenditures, will be an inviting target. But we should proceed with great caution. As our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan winds down, there will be pressure to reduce the size of the military and its budget, just as we have at the conclusion of past wars—with sometimes tragic results. President Harry Truman’s drastic dismantling of the armed forces after World War II left us unprepared for the Korean conflict, for which we paid dearly. As a nation, we can survive cuts in benefits and reductions in government services, albeit with pain. But failure is not an option that we can afford when it comes to protecting the nation and its people.
The global balance of economic power and influence is changing. America remains the dominant economy, but this is increasingly challenged. China currently funds many of our government operations. Its military power is growing, as is that of other emerging nations. We hope for continued peaceful economic competition and mutual growth, but who can say what the future will bring? Will peace and stability reign in the Middle East when our armed forces withdraw? Or will the area breed a new wave of anti-Western terrorism?
Regrettably, we must plan for the worst. Our military capacity today is already stretched thin. We reduce that capacity further at our own peril. The world tomorrow will likely be no less dangerous than it is today.