By Jim Heffernan
I’ve been thinking a lot about what passes for politics these days. It’s nothing like the contests I remember between Eisenhower and Stevenson or Johnson and Goldwater.
We certainly didn’t always agree, but we could talk about our differences and manage to smile at one another. I grew up enjoying politics and it seemed like we talked about big issues.
Those days are gone. The biq issues, like climate change, the national debt, and wealth inequality, are ignored and we concentrate on fake issues like illegal immigration and transgender athletes.
The big issues are “ticking time bombs” we are leaving for our children and grandchildren. I feel sure the fake issues will be quaint footnotes in future history books about our time.
In the past, it was possible to have meaningful discussions about politics because we shared a common set of facts to form a starting point for comparison. No more. These days, we can make up our own set of facts.
I think it started with Ronald Reagon’s “welfare queen” story that was never verified and often changed. It wasn’t true, but it sure got votes. What’s the harm in stretching the truth for electoral gain?
It’s progressed from there, and the internet is perfectly willing to supply anyone with whatever set of “facts” they desire.
There is one huge problem we are passing on to our children that is immune to fake facts. It is our national debt. It isn’t based on opinion, it’s accounting and the cold hard numbers speak for themselves.
Maybe I’m showing my age, but I remember 1986 for being the milestone when our national debt hit two trillion dollars. It was a big deal at the time. The national debt didn’t hit one trillion dollars until 1982.
I thought it would be a political cudgel we could use for years. 206 years and three major wars to reach a debt of one trillion dollars. 3 years of Ronald Reagan tax cuts and defense spending to hit a debt of2 trillion dollars.
Mostly, Democrats and Republicans just shrug about the debt and pass it on to our children.
Standard and Poor and Moody’s have downgraded our nation’s credit rating. The value of the dollar is falling.
Since 1986, we’ve piled another 34 trillion dollars onto our debt. For a while, I bought it when I heard people excusing our national debt with the idea “our gross domestic product has grown so much, we can tolerate a greater debt, it’s a matter of percentage.”
It is a matter of percentage, but now it’s turned on its head. In the 70’s, debt was about 30% of our revenue. Today, debt is 130% of our revenue. It’s like me earning $50K a year and putting $65K on my credit card. There’s not a good ending to the story.
It’s immoral. We are borrowing money to benefit our very rich and our children will be left with the bill.