Getting the budget under control

How much worse do our nation's finances have to get before our elected representatives will do something about it?

Remember your father telling you money doesn't grow on trees? Spend more money than you make, he'd warn, and you are on a sure road to financial ruin.

You don't have to be an economist or mathematician to know the United States is on a dangerous course as politicians continue to spend more than we can afford. The problem of overspending has been bipartisan. Spending grew tremendously when Republicans were in charge, and it continues to grow in a turbocharged way now that Democrats are at the helm.

Today's leaders in Washington justify the spending binge as necessary to avert economic disaster. It's not uncommon for government to attempt to inject money into the economy during downturns. Yet our current economic crisis has been an excuse to permanently increase government spending and incur trillions of dollars in debt throughout the rest of the decade, as the president proposes in his budget.

A great country like ours will inevitably face challenges, even crises, in the future.

That's why we can't postpone getting our fiscal house in order. If we do face another crisis, we will dig ourselves into a deeper hole of debt. That will make it more difficult for us to climb out and less able to deal with other challenges that will inevitably arise.

The public is starting to pay more attention to the problem of runaway spending in Washington. A recent Gallup poll found that nearly eight in 10 voters will consider the federal debt an extremely or very important issue when deciding who to vote for in November. When asked what they thought would be the biggest problem facing the country in 25 years, government debt was most commonly mentioned.

I bet even more people would be concerned about the debt if they knew just how serious our problems are. Politicians often use numbers that are so large that it's easy to lose sight of what they mean. How can a family make sense of what a $10 trillion debt means to their own financial future?

A new video by a nonpartisan organization, Public Notice (www.thepublicnotice.org), puts those numbers into context so we can understand the trajectory we are on and what that means to an average family. Consider that in 2000, the federal government spent $21,000 per household. Today, Washington spends $31,000 per household. That's an increase of more than 40 percent. In 10 years, Washington expects to spend $43,000 per household. Yes, our per-household spending will have doubled between 2000 and 2020. Does that sound like a sustainable spending path?

Not surprisingly, all this spending has resulted in record debt accumulation. In 2000, each family's share of the federal debt was $68,000 -- already a staggering sum. Yet today, that debt burden has grown to $115,000 per family. That's an increase of 70 percent in 10 years. It's like the government has taken out a mortgage on our behalf, but given us no house!

Ten years from now, unless something changes in Washington, the debt per household will be $194,000.

As a result of all of this debt, in 10 years, our nation will be spending four times more on interest payments to service the debt. In fact, interest payments and entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, will consume 90 percent of all revenue. Only a small fraction of our tax dollars will be available for defense, education or for addressing any unforeseen crisis that might come our way.

These are extremely scary numbers. But as the Bankrupting America video reminds us, while our financial problems are big and getting worse, they are also solvable. In fact, if Washington just cut back total government spending to the average per-household level of the 1990s, we could easily balance the budget in less than three years.

Making spending cuts will require some sacrifices. Yet does anyone doubt that the federal government's budget includes billions -- even hundreds of billions -- that are largely wasteful and could be eliminated?

Real leadership is about making tough choices, and we need real leadership in Washington now more than ever. The only way we will get Congress to make those tough choices is if we have an engaged, informed citizenry. Don't let anyone convince you that the problem is too large to solve or that a problem doesn't exist. Hold Congress accountable. We can get our nation's fiscal house back in order by demanding that our elected representatives stop putting off the tough choices and work to cut spending today.

J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com) is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002.