We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been travelling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road – the one less traveled by – offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. -Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1964
This quote that helped launch the environmental movement needs only one change to bring it into the 21st century, switch the last word “earth” for “economy.” Pundits, politicians and activists have provided a number of labels for the fallout from our decades of deficit spending and massive national debt problem including fiscal slavery, fiscal child abuse and debt depression. Here’s one more for consideration, economic silent spring.
Americans are at a crossroads: either we continue down the “superhighway” of dependence on entitlements (an historic 48 million Americans now on food stamps) made possible through endless government spending and massive debt, or we make difficult choices, prioritize our federal budget and halt unsustainable government spending. The latter will be bumpy, but the final destination is individual economic freedom. The former, the “superhighway,” ends in disaster – our children’s economic silent spring with the death of individual freedom and economic opportunity.
Right now every man, woman and child in the United States is shackled with more than $46,700 of national debt and that does not include interest or unfunded liabilities such as Medicare and Social Security. Assuming we continue down the superhighway of spending, by 2015 every child in America and their parents will owe more than $70,000 each according to the U.S. Debt Clock.
Left unchecked all this spending eventually hits our communities and our kitchen tables in several ways including higher interest rates, higher taxes, higher unemployment, stagnant economic growth and a decline in the standard of living.
Meg Handley explained in “How the National Debt Affects You,” a column for US News, that right now the U.S. enjoys low interest rates to service its debt, but that won’t last forever. Eventually it becomes more difficult and expensive, thus more taxpayer dollars will be needed to pay the escalating cost of interest, leaving less money for necessary government services.
Consumer borrowing is also affected as the interest rates for everything from mortgages to student loans to credit cards will go up as well. And it’s not a matter of if, but when, this will occur. If government continues spending money we don’t have, we’ll have no control over the when either.
With more money needed to service debt in both the public and private sectors, less money is available for capital investment resulting in slow or no economic growth. This means no new jobs for a country whose population is expected to reach nearly 400 million by 2050 according to the Census Bureau.
It would be one thing if we were paying our own reckless spending bills, but we aren’t. Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy testified in front of the House Ways and Means Committee just a few months ago, “future generations will have to pay today‘s deficits. We are about to embark on the most massive transfer of wealth from younger taxpayers to older ones in American history. It will be not just unprecedented but also unfair: Our children will pay for the decisions we make today.”
Her testimony must have fallen on deaf ears. Congress just approved a deal to raise the debt limit another $2.4 trillion while promising a reduction in the growth of government spending over the next decade. For our fiscal dysfunction, our largest foreign creditor – the Chinese – lecture us and the Russians mock us.
This article is a plea to stop spending our children’s future. We are concerned that Big Government is a parasite sucking the economic life out of our children’s future. For our concern, we are demonized. Former Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry does not even think we deserve the courtesy of media coverage.
But have no fear, we are neither “terrorists” nor “toxic,” “hostage takers” nor “teabaggers.” We are loving parents who want the best for our children and grandchildren.
Rachel Carson’s sense of urgency to protect the environment so the next generation could enjoy all its splendor is no different from the sense of urgency many parents, particularly MAD (Mothers Against Debt) moms, feel about protecting our economy from the dangers of the explosive growth in government. We feel as strongly about our children’s economic future as Rachel Carson felt about the future of the environment. And we hope to launch a movement the same way she did.
Amy Oliver Cooke is the founder of Mothers Against Debt (www. Mothersagainstdebt.com). She is also the director of the Transparency Project for the Independence Institute and writes on energy policy.
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