America’s debt crisis threatens our children’s future. We the People need to fix it

If your house were on fire and your children were inside, you would not shrug and say that you are only one person and therefore powerless. You would run toward danger because the people you love were at risk and because waiting would be an act of surrender. America is facing a different kind of fire. It is a fiscal fire, and our children and grandchildren are already inside the house.

Some have heard warnings about the national debt for so long that they conclude nothing terrible ever happens. Others believe a single voice cannot possibly matter. Some do not think the problem is serious. Others assume that because the United States remains the world’s strongest economy, nothing can bring us down.

Those habits of mind ignore how different this moment is from anything we have faced before. The national debt has now surpassed $40 trillion, a sum so large it is almost impossible to hold in the mind and a burden of roughly $117,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. The size of the number is daunting, but the direction of the path is what should keep us awake.

WASHINGTON IS DRIVING AMERICA TOWARD A DEBT CRISIS WE CAN'T IGNORE ANY LONGER

The federal government continues to spend more than it collects, and deficits stretch into the multi-trillion-dollar range year after year with no end in sight. Social Security and Medicare carry unfunded obligations measured in the tens of trillions, and there is no serious plan to close the gap. The trust funds will be exhausted in a few years, and current law would then force major benefit cuts.

U.S. dollar bills overlaid on Congress. (Douglas Rissing)

Interest costs already exceed $1 trillion a year and consume more than one fifth of total federal revenue, and that share is growing. The Government Accountability Office says the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path that poses serious economic, national security and societal challenges. These are not partisan talking points. They are mathematical realities, and they make today unlike any earlier chapter in our history.

MEDICARE IS ONE OF AMERICA’S GREATEST SUCCESSES — AND A FISCAL TIME BOMB

At some point, debt stops being an abstract figure in a government report and becomes a direct threat to the economy. Investors will eventually lose confidence and stop buying our debt at rates we can bear. That is when the Ponzi structure collapses and a fiscal crisis arrives. We cannot wait for that day as if surprise will make the outcome more honorable.

America’s greatest economic strength has always been its people, the men and women who work, save, invest, build businesses, raise families and solve hard problems. We inherited an extraordinary country from previous generations. We have a moral obligation to leave our children and grandchildren a country at least as strong as the one we received, not one that is bankrupt.

$50 TRILLION IN DEBT IS NOT A DISTANT THREAT. AMERICA IS SPEEDING TOWARDS IT

There is no painless way out of a problem this large. Getting government spending and deficits under control will mean restraint, entitlement reform, stronger growth and choices that some voters will dislike. Those choices still must be made while there is time, because the pain of discipline now is small next to the wreckage of a failed financial system, when savings shrink, credit dries up, businesses fail and even basic government promises will be harder to guarantee.

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The answer ultimately rests with "We the People." Congress will not fix the problem because economists produce another report, or one president gives another speech, or because one political party suddenly discovers fiscal virtue. It will happen when the American people understand how serious the danger is and demand that Congress repair the mess it has created. That is the power of our voices and our votes. One citizen will not change Washington. Millions of individual decisions can become a political force that Congress cannot ignore.

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Our house is on fire. Once we recognize and accept that reality, we will act. The remaining question is whether we will act before the damage becomes irreversible. Our children and grandchildren are counting on us. We should not leave them in a burning house.

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