For Fiscal Health, Stop the Bleeding

Americans have plenty to worry about at a time when the job market is tight, the housing market is weak and the stock markets swing like a 6-year-old at recess.

Yet, there's a danger quietly building that seldom attracts the attention of most Americans. It's a threat, however, that could wreck the financial future for tens of million of children and young adults as well as baby boomers' retirement years.

In a speech last week at the Center for American Progress, Christina Romer, President Barack Obama's chairwoman for the Council of Economic Advisers, warned of the "yawning gap'' between projected revenue and spending on federal entitlement programs. It's a gap that likely will push the already enormous federal budget deficit, as well as the national debt, to new heights of absurdity.

Romer offered the right diagnosis: The deficit, if not soon addressed, could drain the economy of its vitality for decades to come. But her prescribed treatment — an enormous new entitlement program — is na•ve at best.

The title of Romer's speech was "Health Care Reform and the Budget Deficit,'' and it was her unhappy task, as a representative of the president, to pitch the idea that enacting a health-care reform plan, including the so-called public option, offers the best hope for trimming the deficit.

To believe that is to live in a land where inside-the-beltway politics doesn't exist and the good members of the House and Senate are all about fiscal responsibility all the time.

Meanwhile, back in the real world of Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has just pitched a health-care plan that makes Three-card Monte seem like an honest game of chance.

The Pelosi package has been touted as fiscally balanced, but it achieves that by shifting a quarter of a trillion dollars in costs to a separate piece of legislation. The second bill would increase the deficit by about $200 billion.

The president makes a very sound point when he insists that the nation's systems for paying for health care are fractured. (That includes, by the way, the Medicare system.)

His list of priorities, however, is out of order. Bear down first in a concentrated, disciplined manner on the current budget deficit, the exploding national debt and the dangerous gaps in Social Security and Medicare obligations. Then, the nation can begin to think about whether it can afford another expensive entitlement.

REPRINTED FROM THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM