“I know cause I won both of ‘em,” President Obama said defiantly during his State of the Union address two weeks ago after Republican members of Congress sarcastically applauded the fact that he had run his last campaign. As a supporter of the President on most issues, I admit that I loved this moment. His speech was cocky and partisan. If he was blamed for the sluggish economy of his first term, doesn’t he have a right to take credit for its recent upswing? Still, my urge to cheer on Obama was resisted by another feeling, that of discouragement over a fact we all already know: Washington is broken. Obama outlined a series of policy ideas throughout his speech, almost none of which will ever become law in a Republican Congress. And one issue that he had repeatedly discussed in previous State of the Unions was glaringly absent: our national debt.
Today, our government’s debt is at about $13 trillion, equal to around 74 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014. Except for the period during and immediately following World War II, this is an unprecedented level, and one that will continue to skyrocket unless major policy changes are made. Debt is not always a pernicious force. Taking on debt was crucial to our country’s recovery from the Great Depression. But the amount of debt that a country can accumulate before its citizens feel the economic burden is limited. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that a failure to act will cause federal debt to reach 106 percent of GDP within 25 years. The economic ramifications would be severe for all Americans, reducing the average income per person by $5,000, according to the CBO. Forget domestic investments. By 2050, interest costs alone on the debt are projected to be more than four times what the federal government has historically spent on education, infrastructure and research and development combined.
In this era of overwhelming political polarization, two distinct courses of action on this issue gain traction. On the right, conservatives argue for spending cuts. On the left, progressives highlight the need for tax increases. Our ideologies predispose us to either of these positions, leading to a logjam in which both sides speak over each other. But we do have a common goal — All Americans have something to gain from ensuring our nation’s long-term fiscal solvency.
After all, a surplus would provide an economic boom and allow the government to make the investments that American people so badly need, in areas such as education, infrastructure and scientific and technological advancement that increase opportunities for all Americans, regardless of circumstance. Entitlement programs like Social Security are vital to protecting many Americans in need, but a failure to reform them will reduce our ability to make the smart investments that our generation, our children and our grandchildren need.
Reducing our debt should be an area of bipartisan compromise. Even in the Washington of Netflix’s “House of Cards,” where murder and backstabbing reign, a compromise over entitlement reform was reached. Yet, Obama did not touch on the issue in his address to Congress and the nation, a symbolic declaration that the prospects of solving this problem during the Obama administration are dead.
[quote_box name=""]There are so many reasons to care about fixing our national debt. If you’re passionate about education, about civil rights, about taxation, about pretty much anything the government does, should or should not do, then you should care about our debt.[/quote_box]
If logic counted in Washington, centrists on both sides of the aisle would get together and pass a compromise solution such as that developed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission. That commission was created by President Obama in 2010 and issued a comprehensive set of policy recommendations to stabilize the long-term national debt through a combination of raising revenue and cutting spending. Eleven of the 18 commission members supported those recommendations, falling short of the 14 needed to send the plan to Congress for an up or down vote. Nonetheless, the plan is often cited as a framework for a potential bipartisan deal.
Unfortunately, as we have seen time and time again, such logic and compromise is ephemeral in Washington. Despite bipartisan support among the public and many political leaders (Democrats like Nancy Pelosi (California) and Steny Hoyer (Maryland) and Republicans like John McCain (Arizona) and Michael Crapo (Idaho) all support the Simpson-Bowles framework, which achieved a 2:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases), extremists and ideologues on both sides, such as the liberal economist Paul Krugman and budget hawk Paul Ryan (Wisconsin), rallied opposition against the compromise.
In some ways, this makes sense. Politicians do not have any incentive to act on this issue. It’s in their short-term interest to stick to their ideological guns — the mere mention of touching an entrenched entitlement program or raising taxes can spell defeat for a politician whose re-election is their primary concern — even if it puts their children and grandchildren in the uncomfortable position of footing the ballooning bill.
So who we do we turn to if we can’t count on our representatives in Washington? Ourselves. It’s up to us to solve this problem now instead of 25 years from now, when the problem will be so much worse. If our political leaders are only thinking about the present, we have to think about the future. The national debt is not a sexy issue. No one will ever have a federal holiday made in their honor for leading the entitlement reform movement. But if the college students of today want a strong economy 25 years from now and to receive benefits from entitlement programs such as Social Security that they currently pay in to, they need to make their voices heard.
Young people should raise awareness about our fiscal crisis and send a clear message that anyone who wants our votes must take our future seriously. We can get informed and discuss this issue and our options to address it without the partisan rhetoric that feeds the gridlock in Washington. Changing the way we think about the national debt is the best way to get our representatives to address it.
There are so many reasons to care about fixing our national debt. If you’re passionate about education, about civil rights, about taxation, about pretty much anything the government does, should or should not do, then you should care about our debt. We can’t spend our way out of this, and we can’t cut our way out of this. But bold, bipartisan solutions do exist.
So keep that in mind when you go to the voting booth, when you talk politics with your friends, when you watch the next State of the Union. Raising awareness about this issue is our only choice, and it’s up to us Millennials to do so if our representatives refuse.
Mark Davies (‘14C) is an alumnus of the College from Pelham, New York.
