OPINION - Editorial

The Womack budget

The country has to start somewhere

We're reminded of the poet, P.J. O'Rourke, who once said that giving power and money to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. But here we are, America. The United States government is $21 trillion in debt.

Twenty-one. Trillion. And every minute, that debt grows by millions.

Twenty-one trillion is a number so vast that no human can grasp it. Most of us, if we live to a ripe old age, will only live a few billion seconds. A trillion seconds ago, mankind was changing his world with a new invention called "stone tools."

A trillion is a lot. Twenty-one trillion is a lot more.

It's going to take a lot of growth, reform, new ideas and responsible public servants to ever get government spending under control on the federal level. Growth, we sometimes get. New ideas, we sometimes get. But reform and responsible public servants are more rare. Which is where Steve Womack comes in.

U.S. Rep. Steve Womack is the chairman of the Budget Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He's also from Arkansas. He unveiled what the press is calling a budget blueprint this week, which means it's more suggestion than holy writ. But his recommendations would scale back government spending by the trillions, and maybe even achieve something of a balanced federal budget in the next 10 years.

Of course, the whole thing is dead on arrival in Congress. The loyal opposition will never let the thing clear the Senate, should it by some miracle clear the House. But what this is, is a starting point. Somebody needs to lead. Somebody needs to take the heat. Somebody needs to explain to the American people that we've been living on the credit card for much too long. Steve Womack has done just that.

The blueprint "would yield $8.1 trillion in deficit reduction compared to current projections over the next 10 years." Which is a good start. If only a start.

Speaking of starts, the plan calls for eliminating waste and fraud in government. That's always the place a budget wonk starts. It's become tradition! to declare savings by finding abuse in government spending. And one day somebody will actually get around to doing it.

There are other proposals in Rep. Womack's blueprint. And they're already drawing fire and ire. He proposes capping Medicaid, repealing Obamacare, selling 100 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Reserve, limiting Pell Grants and partially privatizing Medicare.

Some of this is obviously pie-in-the-sky conservative budgeting. And limiting Pell Grants for low-income college students sounds a lot like eating your seed corn. Also, the Strategic Reserve is strategic and reserved for a reason: in case of a worldwide catastrophe or war, but we repeat ourselves. All that oil kept under those salt domes on the Gulf is supposed to be used as a buffer against world-wide supply disruptions, not a savings account to be dipped into on rainy days.

There will be plenty of opposition to any government cuts, too. And plenty of those who'd like to raise taxes--or at least end President Trump's tax cuts from last year. But that's what Democrats are for.

In this wonderful two-party system, somebody has to approach it from the other perspective and give both sides something to debate. Steve Womack has done that. So let's get started.

On your marks, get set . . . .

It's not that often somebody quoted in a budget story will cause you to belly-laugh. So we have to thank U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Kentucky), who said this about Steve Womack's budget proposals:

"The 2019 Republican budget scraps any sense of responsibility to the American people and any obligation to being honest."

Being honest? Since when has that been a concern of federal budgeteers? Being honest with the American people certainly wasn't a priority in the last two decades while politicians were piling up the public debt. We remember exactly no campaign ads that featured a Senator Bedfellow bragging about saddling future generations with debt we're running up now. As for responsibility, Steve Womack's budget ideas might not have much of a chance to pass the Congress, but he's responsible enough to acknowledge the problem without sugar-coating things.

One day, the interest we American taxpayers pay on the debt will become so high that we can't afford it. Or to pay it we will have to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and/or defense to the point of recklessness. Another option, we suppose, is default. Which would bring on an economic downturn that would make the Great Recession of '08 look like a hiccup. So that's not really an option, not for the United States and its worldwide currency.

"We swore an oath to the Constitution that we would defend her against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Rep. Womack told the papers. "There is not a bigger enemy on the domestic side than the debt and the deficits and the concentration of debt now exceeding $21 trillion."

That about sums it up. Honest.

Editorial on 06/21/2018

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