MATTHEW PICCOLO
Staff Writer
Americans possess abundant strengths that make their country a world superpower, but their most debilitating characteristic is lack of individual and collective foresight. This absence of vision has engendered a nation ripe with impatient foreign policy practices and an exorbitant debt burden.
Americans consistently elevate seemingly immediate needs and today’s fleeting pleasures above more essential, long-term ambitions. Often, Americans’ pre-occupation with the present eliminates, or at best delays, the attainment of future goals.
The U.S. government and people’s irresponsible fiscal policies and desire to leave the war in Iraq are the most crippling forms of shortsightedness in the United States.
Shortsighted, quick-fix policies like the minimum wage, food stamps and farm subsidies, though well meaning, placate our fears in the present but fail to provide durable solutions that address the roots of poverty and economic instability. Only policies that empower the poor with lifelong education and skills will produce permanent improvement.
Shortsightedness has inhibited worthy efforts to protect U.S. interests abroad.
Opinions on the war in Iraq aside, many Americans impatiently insist that leaving Iraq sooner than later is ideal for American and Iraqi interests, but they ignore deleterious, future consequences of doing so. Rapid redeployment will leave Iraqis in a chaotic state with minimal infrastructure rebuilt, eager insurgents, and a probable full-scale civil war.
Most notably, abandoning Iraq today will further embolden our enemies to take action. Iraq’s menacing neighbor Iran will strategically extend its influence throughout the Middle East and beyond, observing, as also evidenced in Vietnam, that though America’s resources are plentiful its political will and patience are not. Americans must sacrifice and endure conflict today in order to obtain long-term peace and stability in the Middle East.
America’s national debt today approaches $9 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury. That’s a $29,000 burden per American. We spend and cut taxes and spend accumulating irresponsible debt. Much is said about the national debt but little is done to reduce it.
For instance, all major government agencies affirm that entitlement programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, will consume as much as 20 percent of the GDP within the next few decades, according to the Government Accountability Office. The new Medicare Part D program will cost up to $678 billion over the next 10 years, according to a February, 2006 Heritage Foundation article. These figures are not news, and yet, Americans continue to ignore the public treasury’s potentially catastrophic future.
Not everyone is disregarding our financial fix. In 2005, President George W. Bush attempted to cash out his political capital with Social Security reform, but people were not then, and still are not, in the mood for change despite the program’s impending bankruptcy. Politicians fear that altering the system for the future will repel senior citizen voters, comprising 19 percent of registered voters, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Ironically, the entitlement programs that aim to provide long-term security for U.S. citizens may ultimately shred their safety net, resulting in more insecurity than ever.
Congress should reform budget controls to instill increased accountability and careful planning in the budget process. Enforcing the pay-as-you-go rule, which ensures that neither mandatory spending nor tax legislation increases the deficit, and reauthorizing a line item veto will be a step in the right direction.
Although politicians are well meaning, they do not always propose prudent policy. Americans need effective, long-term solutions, not temporary, feel-good policies that lull them into a false sense of security only to awaken to a raging lion.
These public problems often originate from seemingly innocuous personal habits.
Consider the wonderful world of health. After Jane Doe’s calculus final, she chooses to celebrate the moment. She picks up an order of greasy French fries, a double bacon cheeseburger and a Coke. On the drive home, she enjoys an after-dinner cigarette. That night, she enjoys one too many drinks with her friends. In the morning, she enjoys a headache, nausea and fatigue. More significantly, after a long life of such routine, she eventually develops obesity, heart and liver disease and lung cancer. In the post-information age, she cannot claim ignorance of the harmful effects of her habits. Jane chose to live in the moment, daily ignoring her future.
According to the Federal Reserve, the average American had a median $2,200 in credit card debt in 2004. More than 55 percent of cardholders carry balances. As purchases accumulate so does interest. Living from paycheck to paycheck becomes surviving from credit line to credit line. Though knowing the debt must be repaid, Americans covet a new surfboard, cute pair of stilettos or Xbox 360 today. Desiring today’s gadgets and gizmos supersedes future financial security. They disregard cautionary thoughts of possible health emergencies, natural disasters or unemployment that may deplete future income.
Better things come to those who wait. Americans need patience and determination to delay hunger pangs while the ketchup eases out of the bottle.
Implementing prudent, visionary policies now will bring about more peace and prosperity tomorrow than imaginable today.
04-05-2007