USA on automatic pilot

Athens on the Potomac

Yet another invitation for the conflagration in Greece to leap the Atlantic

By the Chicago Tribune editors

President Barack Obama's budget proposal Monday all but seals the deal: Together, Washington Democrats and Republicans have stopped governing. Both parties now are on automatic pilot. They'll do as little as possible to solve this nation's debt crisis before Nov. 6. Instead they'll wait to see whether American voters firmly choose a direction for the United States and its destructive indebtedness.

How destructive? Conveniently, one of this nation's plausible futures plays out vividly on a TV screen near you: Fire-heaving mobs enraged by the harsh consequences of rampant public borrowing have torched one of Europe's grossly indebted capitals, Athens. Fretful officials in other capitals — Rome, Lisbon, Madrid and more — must wonder whether the flames will rage in their countries next.

None of which evidently dents skulls in Washington, where federal pols from both parties act as if they're weirdly determined to invite Greece's conflagration to leap the Atlantic. With nothing nobler than election strategy busying the Capitol and White House, basic management of the nation's business has to wait for some point beyond Election Day.

Thus the future of what Americans obtusely call our federal debt — in truth it's our current and future taxpayers' debt — grows bleaker. As does, for lack of real reforms, the long-term prospect for Medicare and Social Security: Total expenditures on those programs for seniors, plus the portion of Medicaid that covers their nursing-home expenses, will rise from 43 percent of federal spending today to 54 percent in 10 years.

No wonder, then, that The Washington Post's Ezra Klein continues to describe the U.S. government as an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army. He might add that the conglomerate is racing ever further into debt.

The budget proposal Obama floated Monday, for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, would do little to reduce that breakneck speed. That said, you can set aside virtually every notion in the president's plan. He knows as well as everyone else in Washington that a Congress looking to November won't pass it.

Monday's document, in truth, is a campaign playbook — the vision of government that Obama hopes voters will reward with a second presidential term. Its central theme:

Obama didn't use the S-word — stimulus — but he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and borrow more money in order to spend more on economic ... stimulus. Yes, the president's plan does continue to give lip service to debt reduction in future years. But the proposal he floated Monday actually would aggravate the somewhat rosier debt projections he provided to Congress as recently as September.

What we have then is a debt debacle that, even with the president's plan, would continue to grow our debt by leaps and bounds. If you focus on only two numbers from Monday's gully washer of statistics, make them these frightening figures — supplied to us late Monday by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, based on its extrapolation of details from the president's Office of Management and Budget:

• As is, our total debt will, over the next 10 years, rise from today's $15.3 trillion to $28.4 trillion.

• Under the alternative plan Obama announced Monday, with its tax hikes and tighter defense spending, total debt also would rise, to $25.9 trillion.

Sorry, but we'd rather lower  the debt, not choose either of those unacceptable poisons: Adding another $10.6 trillion, instead of adding another $13.1 trillion, wouldn't appreciably ease the economy-crushing debt burden we are dumping on our children and grandchildren.

So the Democrats are to blame for Washington's abdication of duty?

This is the part of the editorial where we would love to report that a rival political party wants to break through Washington's gridlock and cut a Go-Big deal to drive the enormous debt numbers down.

Unfortunately, though, congressional Republicans are as stubborn about opposing any tax increases as the president and his fellow Democrats are about seriously reforming federal spending — especially those doomed entitlement programs. We've been advocating a 3- or 4-1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue hikes — an acknowledgment of how our profligate expenditures and future spending commitments got us to where we are.

But Washington Republicans don't want to go that far. The near-accords last summer — back when Obama was open to major Medicare cuts and GOP House Speaker John Boehner was open to higher revenues — those deals evidently are off the table. At least until the morning of Nov. 7.

Instead, members of both parties right now are squabbling over details of extending a payroll tax cut through calendar 2012. The likely effects of that lousy idea are to further weaken the Social Security system that relies on that tax, and to make taxpayers borrow themselves even further into debt in order to pay for their own tax break.

Both parties know that ending the unaffordable payroll tax cut might offend some voters who care more about their extra $20 a week than they do about watching Washington disintegrate into a debt-choked Athens on the Potomac.

Offend voters? In an election year? Can't have that.

Easier for the president and Congress to just stop governing.