The U.S. National Debt: On the Addiction of Living Beyond One's Means

Twelve times a thousand times a billion  Such a number can only be known abstractly to the human mind.  A person is not apt to see 12 trillion widgets and thus fully realize how many that number signifies. Just in an abstract sense, however, the number can be understood represent debt that is beyond sustainability.   If not, then exactly how much signifies the threshold over which any additional debt will never be paid back? The U.S. federal debt stands at $12 billion as 2009 is drawing to a close.  If this amount is difficult for us to contemplate, how realistic is it that the debt will ever be paid off? that the debt has been growing since the late 1990s may mean that the question of paying off the federal debt might never be seriously entertained. 

In December, 2009, The New York Times reported, “With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher. In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”[1] As much as the interest expense is expected to be (and the implied difficulty in paying down the debt, let alone covering its interest expense, it may be even harder before long.  Again, according to The New York Times, “Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.”[2]

While the deficit-spending is perfectly understandable in the context of a financial crisis and otherwise likely economic depression, such spending has hardly been saved for such times.  In fact, it has been part of “normal” US Government budgeting.  What the newspaper doesn’t mention is that even in the late 1990’s when the government was running surpluses and the economy was booming, only part of the surfeit was used to reduce the government’s debt.  At the time, Bill Clinton’s administration used the “rationale” that the boom that had been going on since the mid-1980s would go on for another fifteen years from the late 90’s.   Even had that forecast been realistic, I’m not sure that all of the government surpluses together could have eliminated the public debt.

In any case, fiscally the US Government has been out of balance for decades.   What might be the cause?  Two candidates come readily to mind.  The American culture is a rather self-consumption-oriented society wherein spending beyond one’s means is not a matter of moral disapprobation.  In other words, the problem may boil down to a “gimme, gimme, gimme” mentality—a lack of maturity, really.  Secondly (and relatedly), representative democracy itself may itself favor spending over taxation to cover it.  

Any normative constraint that might operate at the individual level may not exist at the institutional level where representatives are effectively rewarded for bringing home the bacon and punished for raising taxes.  Although it could be argued that the representatives should be more responsible nonetheless (as their goal ought not be simply to be reelected), we can point to ourselves, the American citizens, as the force behind the unsustainable fiscal situation.  We don’t have to endure incumbants who have spent in deficits, but we do.  The US House incumbancy rate almost guarantees that once someone is elected, he or she can be virtually assured of being re-elected in two years, und so weiter.    

The problem, in other words, lies within us.  Too few of us value self-discipline in ourselves.  We are unwilling to call other people on their profligate credit-card spending, and we refuse to vote out of office those representatives who have voted outside of a financial crisis for an unbalanced budget.  Consider how different a people we would be were to insist at the ballot box that our representatives actually make a contribution to paying down some of the debt (again, not during a financial crisis) each year during their terms.  

How different we would be if we held our officials accountable for more than scandal.   How different we would be if we “just said no” to the credit card companies and went without the plastic (using debit cards that could be used only on positive balances and having a savings account for emergencies).  If we look at the US Government as unsustainable, what we are really saying is that we, ourselves, are fundamentally flawed as concerning being adults.  The problem, in other words, transcends finance and politics.  We are living beyond our means.

1. Edmund L. Andrews, "Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government," The New York Times, November 22, 2009.

2. Ibid.

Integrity in the Job-Description of a US Senator: On the Role of the Senate's Design and Purposes

Micheal Bennet, who represented Colorado as a U.S. Senator, told a journalist in 2009 that the possibility of losing his seat  in 2010 should not hold him back from voting for health-care reform even if it were unpopular in Colorado.   The journalist, of CNN, asked, "If you get to the final point and you are a critical vote for health care reform, and every piece of evidence tells you, if you support that bill, you will lose your job, would you cast the vote and lose your job?" Bennet replied, "Yes."[1] Voting in line with the best interests of his fellow citizens would evince a degree of political integrity that I suspect few in the biz have today. However, might a representative be wrong and his or her constituents right about the long term best interest? Is a U.S. senator necessarily smarter or more capable of insight? Lest Bennet be criticized here for failing to have represented his constituents, one might take a look back at Madison’s Notes to the constitutional convention for guidance. 

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

1. Josh Gerstein, "Bennet Willing to Sacrifice Seat over Health Vote," Politico, November 11, 2009. 

Twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell: Vor zwanzige Jahre ist die Mauer gefallen

It was a gray rainy Monday in Berlin, yet the sun was shining for those in Europe who are celebrating the fall of the iron curtain.   Twenty years ago from that day, it would have seemed surreal to the east Germans who could suddenly simply walk across a border without fear of being shot.  People simply walked through.  “I just wanted to set foot on your side,” one man said.  “Can I cross over there and visit my parents?” a woman asked.  The east German police could only say, “go ahead.”  There would be no criminal penalties.  Before long, people climbed the wall and started chiseling away.  “The wall has to go,” they cried, “Sie ist zu Ende.”

A state the size of Montana in the EU, the united Germany is today a positive force in Europe.  The fears that gave rise to the European Coal and Steel Cooperative are no longer extant.  To be sure, the existence of the EU renders Germany less a potential threat to its neighbors.  However, Germany is playing a far more positive role in European politics than simply being contained.  In fact, Germany is among the states that have been most supportive of the EU, both monetarily and in terms of supporting further political integration.

   

The lessons of war are not lost on the descendents of those Germans who lost two wars in the twentieth century. The lesson is: a federal union in Europe is the best chance to obviate future war.  The seventeenth century alone demonstrates just how much strife can occupy a century. The problem is perhaps how to give the European Union enough power to prevent war while not giving the union so much power that it can tyrannize over what is innately a heterogenious empire-scale continent. The United States face the same problem, though that union is much closer to the consolidation end than to dissolution.   As much as Europeans may fear consolidation, justifiably looking at American history as evincing such a trajectory, I believe that the illusion that the EU is simply an alliance (in spite of having a supreme court, parliament, and executive branch) ought to be feared just as much.   The former east Germans ought to know the decadence in propaganda.   To be sure, the denial in the US of the empire-level consolidation is just as dangerous.  Both refusals to come to terms with how each of these unions has changed is like refusing to remove one’s blinders before driving.   

In both federal unions, a realistic assessment is requisite to reforming the governance structures to achieve a balance of power between the respective federal governments and the respective state governments.  Common action, such as to forestall war and regulate interstate commerce, and cultural and ideological distinctiveness can each be accommodated; in fact, each can serve as a check on the other, such that neither one can snuff out the other.   Surely one of the lessons learned by the east Germans was that concentrations of power ought to be suspect, given human nature.

Institutional Conflicts of Interest

Although conflicts of interest do not inevitably lead to unethical conduct, they raise the probability that it will occur. Just as a tornado watch indicates that conditions are favorable to the formation of a twister, a conflict of interest evinces conditions favorable to unethical decisions. Interests conflicting in a conflict of interest pit an obligation against either another obligation or self-interest. That is to say, such conflicts tend to involve deontology and egoism.


The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available at Amazon.

Nationalism in Europe: Forestalling Ever Closer Union

Ask a European if the E.U. government could ever consolidate power from the state governments and you would probably get, Nope, we identity with our respective countries. The problem is, such attachments can change. Indeed, they have changed. Europeans alive after fifty years of "ever closer union" would do well to look back at the U.S. after its first fifty (or one hundred) years to get a sense of how the E.U., too, could change. 

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

Health-Care Insurance Reform: A Spectrum of Alternatives with Respect to Federalism

So not to work at cross-purposes, public policy at the federal level of a federal republic should not be at odds with federalism. Put another way, public policy enacted into law that weakens the constitutional archetecture of a governmental system undercuts  is neither prudent nor wise. Heath insurance reform provides us with a case in point. 

In 2009, the U.S. Senate’s majority leader, Harry Reid, proposed a government-run “public” health-care insurance option with an “escape hatch.”   “A state could refuse to participate in the public insurance plan by adopting a law to opt out.”[1] While this proposal would barr a State refusing the public option from participating in the coops that are also a part of Reid’s proposal, the basic “opt out” arrangement is in line with federalism and, moreover, with the inherent heterogenious or diverse nature of an empire spanning across and continent and beyond. In contrast, Olympia Snowe’s preference for “a fallback, safety-net plan” that would trigger the public option in States where insurance companies fail to offer affordable plans is antithetical to federalism because the States would have no choice in whether the plan was triggered.

The approach most in line with federalism would be for the health-plans to be designed in the State governments, with the U.S. Government focused on matters that the States cannot (not will not) do, such as presenting a united foreign policy to the world.  If there is a lowest common denominator for health-care in the US as per the fundamental principles of the Union, a basic program passed by the U.S. Government would be consistent with also having State plans.   Next closest, the U.S. Government would supply money for health-care, which the State governments would decide how to spend.  Even less in line with federalism would be the design of the programs being done by Congress and the WH, with separate opt-outs for the public and coop insurance plans.   Reid’s proposal was less in line with federalism, and finally, as least in line with it, was Snowe’s preference.

1. Robert Pear and David M. Herszenhorn, "Public Option Push in Senate Comes with Escape Hatch," The New York Times, October 26, 2009.

The Consolidation of Power in the American and Roman Empires: On the Rise and Fall of Empires

The American federal government was for at least a century, and perhaps even longer, primarily involved in defending the new empire and regulating commerce between the republics (or states more generically). By the dawning of the twenty-first century, the U.S. Government had grown both in scope and in the number of employees on its payroll while the governments of the republics had been reduced to functioning as little more than local governments. In other words, Congress had come to act like a state legislature, while the states had accepted their status as mere localities. This fundamental shift with respect to American federalism, as well as the empire-“kingdom”-city arrangement, bears a striking resemblance to the Roman empire. By implication, this similarity might lead us to some conclusions regarding the future the United States within the larger story of the rise and fall of empires.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

On Term Limits & Representation in the U.S.: The Anti-Federalist View

In the New York convention for ratifying the U.S. Constitution, Melancton Smith favored having the state legislatures rotating their U.S. Senators rather than keeping the same men in the Senate for life. "It is a circumstance strongly in favor of rotation, that it will have a tendency to diffuse a more general spirit of emulation, and to bring forward into office the genius and abilities of the continent. If the office is to be perpetually confined to a few, other men of equal talents and virtue, but not possessed of so extensive an influence, may be discouraged from aspiring to it."[1] This argument could easily be applied to the people electing U.S. Senators.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

1. Herbert J. Storing, The Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 348.

The European Council and the U.S. Senate: Intergovernmental Institutions in Modern Federalism

As part of comparing the U.S. and E.U., pointing to similarities between the U.S. Senate (especially as originally designed) and the European Council is particularly valuable because both institutions constitute the intergovernmental, and thus international, aspect of their respective unions. By contrast, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the E.U. Parliament constitute purely governmental, or “national,” bodies irrespective of the state governments. Hence both the E.U. and U.S. governments are hybrid governmental/intergovernmental, and thus neither national nor international.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.