The Audacity of Reality  
By James Ehlers 

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility." The words of our 44th president offered in his inaugural address. Words that I hope all Vermonters will take to heart. The time for action, Mr. President, is indeed upon us, and while hope may spring eternal, hope, we know, is not a plan. And we need a plan.

Proof, though, that fools do rush in where angels dare not go, we have been offered "stimulus" plans by our leaders. Though these plans suppose to address what the President referred to "as a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights," they stimulate for me not aplomb, but further consternation.

We have come to this crisis in our economy, not because we do not work enough, but because we spend too much— or as the President puts it, "our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare … for a new age." And now some, our state officials and the President included, propose to further forestall those hard choices by spending yet more. A crisis borne of spending solved through spending?

Here in Vermont, we are burying our youngest generation with mind-boggling expenses. David Coates, formerly of KMPG, concludes that pension liabilities and "other post employee benefits" currently stands at a staggering $838 million for state employees and $1.2 billion for public school teachers. And this debt will continue to grow at a rate of $85 to $90 million a year, and we have no plan to how to pay for it. This $2 billion mess, and growing, had absolutely nothing to do with subprime loans or oil prices. It is purely a function that the President referred to as "our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions."

As if this was not weight for the future generations of our small state to shoulder, there is the additional $3.3 billion in road and bridge maintenance, water system infrastructure, state park maintenance, school construction, $255 million to cover just two years of Medicaid debt and other liabilities, according to citizen economic watchdog organization, Vermonters for Economic Health.

Fortunately, the President promised "those … who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of the day" for nowhere does their need to be more accounting than in the disaster-waiting-to-happen that is the entitlements: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. According to the government’s own accounting office, the GAO, within 19 years, these programs and their interest debt will consume ALL, ALL, ALL federal revenues. We worry about markets "out-of-control" when greedy people seek to gain the upper hand over other greedy people, but what of our most prosperous generations enriching themselves at the expense of our children and children yet to be born?

I do not believe this is what our new president had in mind when he spoke of a "parent’s willingness to nurture a child that finally decides … fate." In this case our lack of concern for our children, will certainly decide their fate. We must hold ourselves to account even though it was our government that sold us this unsustainable program at the outset, and it is our government that looks the other way as they continue to spend yet more despite its inability to afford the programs that currently exist. Clearly government is not working in these cases, and we have the responsibility in this new era to end these programs and replace them for the new age. "All this we can do." All this we must do. The time has indeed come to set aside childish things.

With a nod to Scripture and a poets past:

While pandering politicians others money spend,/ Blather on they must their actions to defend.

Hope may spring eternal, but keep the fools and stimulus, and give us more angels and accountability.

"Let it be said," President Obama, "by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations"—debt free.
 

James Ehlers is the publisher emeritus of Elk Publishing, Inc. and the founder of Livin’ Magazine.