Cut Unneeded Spending - Yours!

The political mantra of 2011 thus far is that it is all about “cutting spending.” This is supposedly the people’s message coming out of the 2010 election. But I suspect that some among us are listening to the people’s message with a tin ear. In fact, 43% in a recent CBS/New York Times poll listed Job Creation as the most important government priority, far outstripping the 18% wanting to revisit Health Care, and only 14% who prioritized Budgeting Cutting.

So let’s talk about this #3 priority – budget cutting – which has nevertheless become the #1 priority of the Washington folks. Is our national debt too high? Yes. Is our annual budget deficit too high? Yes. Is that budget deficit increasingly limiting our ability to be flexible in our national spending decisions, to be able to move spending where it needs to go? Yes. And is our national debt lurking as a behind-the-scenes national security issue, minimizing our response to international issues based upon our debt to other countries? Yes.

We hear of a target by some Tea Party conservatives of cutting $100B from the federal budget this year. President Obama, in his State of the Union speech, proposed a spending freeze for 5 years at 2008 levels, but only on non-security spending. This after he had already proposed a 2-year salary freeze on some – but not all – government employees. He endorsed the Republican proposal to end budget earmarks, to which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told him to “back off.” House Republicans voted to reduce their own operating budget; Obama endorsed spending cuts but is opting to reinvest in education, infrastructure and energy. Representative Paul Ryan, House Budget Committee Chairman and once a firebrand of targeted, radical spending cuts, came on TV and gave a very good Republican response to Obama’s speech. He reinforced the goal of spending cuts, but said such very gently, in a non-threatening manner, with no specifics stated.

The fact is, everyone is now on board the same “USS Spending Cuts” ship, but no one has yet plotted a sailing course. The nautical maps remain in the drawers. It is like my junior high school prom where all the boys and girls are standing against opposite walls, no one willing to be the ones to break the ice and actually go out on the dance floor. Everyone talks about cutting spending, but no one wants to be the first to say “where.” Why? Because talking about cutting spending at the gross level is easy – “Let’s cut $100B.” (Everyone applauds.) But a cut in spending is actually a cut in some favored program, a cut in services, a cut in someone’s grant award, a loss of someone’s tax benefit. The cut ultimately becomes personal and shows up in someone’s bank account, pay stub, or loss of expected services.

Parks close or stop being maintained. Teachers and police get laid off. Medical assistance gets eliminated. New buildings or municipal projects don’t get built. Agricultural subsidies get cut for food corporations. Purchases from businesses are reduced. “Cutting spending” ultimately translates into “you don’t get anymore what you used to get.” And we have gotten very used to getting what we have gotten. Vague, generic headlines become personal. And when it gets personal, people get angry.

So no politician wants to move yet past the headlines and tell people what really has to happen. The President’s special debt commission delivered their true and sobering report in December – and politicians both left and right said “no” and scurried for cover. But that commission jump-started the real conversation and thankfully gave us a good yardstick we can use to measure all the empty rhetoric we will hear through this year.

Everyone is for cutting government spending – as long as it is money being spent on YOU. If we all can agree on the need to cut, we do not agree at all on where to cut. Your “savings” are my “loss.” Almost all states are facing significant budget deficits this year, having been artificially kept afloat the past two years by the federal stimulus program. Reality beckons. When schools start closing and teachers are let go and class sizes swell, 50% of a police force are let go, libraries are shuttered, students can’t get into college, and municipal services are cut back, then spending cuts will hit home. Eliminating cell phones for many state employees is nice symbolism, but will not make much of a dent in California’s $20B+ deficit.

When we finally really talk about cutting significant spending, it will be ugly. Doomsday scenarios will abound; finger-pointing will be plentiful. Conservatives will rush to protect military spending and the corporate welfare (versus military needs) that drive that budget; liberals will decry cuts to social programs and human welfare that drive discretionary spending. Cutters will nevertheless seek to insulate; insulators will seek to cut. We will go around in circles over what are really questions of 1) national priority; 2) the role of government; and 3) impacts on the American people. Is protecting a national park more or less important than protecting a job than protecting me from a robber than keeping citizens healthy?

The discussion will start with trying to identify the losers, who will get cut, how to maneuver to save my needs from the budget ax. It is only when we accept that all of us have to take this hit in some form that true progress will begin to happen. When nothing is sacrosanct then we have a chance to equitably move forward. We have to look at all things without prejudice.

When Republicans are willing to stop spending dollars on military hardware we don’t need because it pays corporations and employees back home in their districts; when liberals are willing to hold up on educational investments that support shoddy schools, incompetent teachers and self-promoting universities; when WE the citizens stop judging our elected officials by how much grant money they bring home to us for projects we often don’t really need nor are a national priority – when we begin to see politicians on the left and right move away from their traditional stump speeches, sound-bites and stated priorities, only then will I begin to believe that we are truly serious about cutting government ending. And when I see We, the People, supporting those political changes, and giving up our personal benefits and sharing the pain together, then I will believe that we are serious. Until then, it is all talk, all show, all going nowhere. It will just be another angry, divisive moment that we are becoming numb to.

It is time for all my junior high classmates to move away from the wall, talk to each other, and begin to dance together before our dreaded curfew arrives.