We cannot even begin to address our rising national debt until we stop using false terms, false beliefs and stop ceding power to the Federal government.
Given the pace of President Trump’s second term and his stacking up success after success, both foreign and domestic, it’s sometimes difficult to pay attention to other subjects. It’s especially difficult as some of those subjects although not nearly as exciting as achieving Middle East Peace, constitute a much more dangerous threat to the survival of our constitutional republic.
Chief among those is the imminent failure of the Social Security/Medicare system, a burden unconstitutionally foisted on Americans by FDR. Right behind that collapse will be the likely default of the Federal Government of these United States. We’ll talk about what that means in another piece.
Some time back, I had a chat with David Webb,** about a guest he had had on his show back then. His guest, Marc Goldwein, was then, the Senior Vice President and Senior Policy Director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The topic was important; How do we get control of our spiraling debt, one major driver of that being Social Security, Medicare and other so-called “mandatory spending?”
From my foxhole, Mr. Goldwein appeared to be quite sincere. However, he wasn’t offering any solutions that resonated with me. He mentioned means testing benefits, benefits people quite rightly believe they’ve paid for and have a right to enjoy. Other suggestions, such as raising the cap on Social Security contributions, in addition to being panaceas, merely tinkered around the edges of the problem.
My biggest concern however, is how he went about describing the problem and the language he used in proposing solutions.
First, he made presumptions without constitutional basis. The biggest of those, was that retirement or retirement insurance, is somehow a Federal responsibility. I can find no enumerated power of the Federal government to be involved in running an individual retirement program, or if reclassified, a means-tested retirement insurance program. The same obtains with Medicare. When we discuss them, we should not do so from a position that holds them to be legitimate programs.
Second, and to be sure, without malice or intent that I could see, Mr. Goldwein’s terminology is deceptive. To be fair, almost everyone involved in government or reporting on it, uses some of the same terms…and they are all…WRONG. One of the most egregious terms bandied about by the “billion here and a billion there,” crowd is “mandatory spending.”
There are only a few categories that are constitutionally mandatory. All else is discretionary. Some higher priority than others, but all discretionary. As for mandatory spending, the only ones I can find in the Constitution are: The remuneration of Federal Judges may not be decreased while they are on the bench and of course, the elephant in the room, debt service.
Debt Service has a number of components. The big one we all hear about is interest on the debt…several hundred BILLION each year. There are also other components. One is pensions for Federal Employees and Military. Those are considered debts the government owes and therefore, get first call on revenues. Finally, work to date, by any Federal employee or contractor, is a debt and must be paid.
Some might claim that Social Security is a pension “owed” by the Federal government to those who have paid in. In a moral sense, I agree. However, over at CATO, Michael D. Tanner notes:
1960 case of Fleming v. Nestor, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that workers have no legally binding contractual rights to their Social Security benefits, and that those benefits can be cut or even eliminated at any time.
Read: Is There a Right to Social Security?
The money quote from Tanner:
In other words, Social Security is not an insurance program at all. It is simply a payroll tax on one side and a welfare program on the other. Your Social Security benefits are always subject to the whim of 535 politicians in Washington.
Got that? The Federal Government has no legal obligation to cut you that Social Security check every month or pay your MediCare bills.
Finally, and I think most importantly, I have some issue with the way I perceived Mr. Goldwein articulate his view of the relationship between government and people. In one segment where the discussion turned to mandatory retirement and articulating a solution, he used the words, “give people the option to work longer.” I truly believe he’s not an acolyte of massive government. But he’s not alone, even on our own team, in using language that presupposes Federal powers not found in the Constitution. I hear phraseology all over the spectrum that presumes that the government has powers that It. Just. Does. Not. Have…except that we’ve allowed it to. How we use our words, is part of that problem.
This is not meant to chastise a fellow traveler in the fight to regain fiscal sanity. However, if we are ever going to defeat the monster of ever rising debt and thus prevent a Venezuela from being inflicted on our grandkids, we have to start by being honest. We can’t use terms that are in and of themselves deceptive. We cannot categorize spending in a manner that is constitutionally false-to-fact. Most importantly, we cannot cede even via our own prose, any power to the Federal government not enumerated in the Constitution.
Bottom line: Most “mandatory” spending…isn’t and most “entitlements”…aren’t
Keep swinging Mr. Goldwein! We can get there!
**David Webb can be found M-F, 9:00-Noon on Sirius XM Channel 125
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