[Baltimore Sun] Armstrong Williams: We need to face our financial crisis | STAFF COMMENTARY
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Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the Democratic and Republican parties, and the American people collectively avoid the subject like the plague — a form of juvenile escapism.
We are racing toward bankruptcy like all previous empires. Our national debt has soared past $35 trillion and is set to reach an even more unfathomable $50 trillion in a decade. Annual federal budgets project deficits of $1 trillion to $2 trillion as far as the eye can see. Annual carrying costs have hit $1 billion with an upward trajectory. The bloated multitrillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex swallows more than 50% of all discretionary spending in pursuing fool’s errands. That includes, for example, turning Afghans into Canadians or denying other big powers spheres of influence that we have celebrated for ourselves for more than two centuries, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine.
The worst investment in history was our more than $2 trillion in Afghanistan, which yielded a second edition of the Taliban more execrable and Neanderthal than the first. The lavish spending spree — like former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos on a shopping spree — was not only pointless. It turned over billions of dollars of military equipment and weapons to a group designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order 13224.
We are like the French Bourbons. We forget nothing and learn nothing. The Afghan debacle was in apostolic succession to our Vietnam misadventure in opposition to a regime that we now count as an ally against China over the South China Sea. To paraphrase manager Casey Stengel about the New York Mets in its maiden season, doesn’t anyone here know how and when to use the United States armed forces? To a certainty, these trillion-dollar follies will repeat themselves without end because no one pays a price for piloting the disaster — not professionally, not financially, not socially and not politically.
As economic guru Herbert Stein quipped, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
But the military is only the Ursa Major of wasteful spending. Take education. We spend nearly $1 trillion annually on public elementary and secondary education — nearly $20,000 per student — only to watch educational achievement plunge year after year. A frightening percentage of high school graduates cannot compose a coherent sentence, sport monosyllabic vocabulary at best, and are unschooled in simple geometry. They are tabula rasa about history or the classics. They know less than what youths knew more than two centuries ago at a minuscule fraction of the cost.
Spending on medical care is the same story. We spend more and more and get less and less healthy as obesity rates soar past the stratosphere. Average life expectancy has hit a ceiling. Annual medical care expenditures have raced past a staggering $4.5 trillion. Lobbyists go where the money is, which is why Big Pharma’s lobbying expenses are nearly $400 million annually.
The United States is already in ransom to foreign countries, including our enemies. As of April 2024, the five countries owning the most U.S. debt are Japan ($1.1 trillion), China ($749 billion), the United Kingdom ($690.2 billion), Luxembourg ($373.5 billion), and Canada ($328.7 billion). In other words, our financial solvency depends on the continued willingness of foreign nations to buy our debt, which could end without a moment’s notice and make the Great Depression look like paradise. While we fixate on semiconductor supply chain issues with China, we cavalierly ignore its ability to shut down the United States government by selling all its U.S. debt at fire sale prices and refusing to buy more.
Despite the financial Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, the 2024 presidential campaign features rival promises to cut taxes vastly more than any conceivable revenue increases. This is crazy — like weight watchers feasting on chocolate ice cream sundaes believing their avoirdupois will not be affected.
We are living on borrowed time. Think of your own household finances. Suppose year after year you continued to borrow money because expenditures exceeded income. At some point, lenders would no longer lend as your borrowing costs escalated. You would be forced to declare bankruptcy unless you changed your business model to achieve positive cash flow.
The government cannot turn straw into gold. It cannot push the day of reckoning off forever.
It can happen here if we do not awaken to our financial crisis.
Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.
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