Where Does the Money Go?

Based on the last few weeks, it seems like Washington is absolutely consumed, even obsessed, with the federal budget. Democrats and Republicans spent countless hours fighting as if the End Times would be triggered by relatively minor shifts in domestic priorities and proposed tax hikes for hedge fund managers. And yet in the end, the political system once again ignored the very real threat lurking in wait. Everyone in Washington knows that federal finances can’t go on the way they have, but they’re not letting the citizenry in on that dirty little secret.

Oh, things got done, certainly. The country does in fact have a budget. President Bush got the limits on discretionary spending he wanted, the Democrats swung more money to domestic programs. The alternative minimum tax got patched, again, saving more than 20 million families a considerable amount of money.

In the meantime, the national debt is at $9 trillion. Another $50 trillion in liabilities stretch out into the future as Medicare and Social Security continue on a path to disaster. There are things that need to happen if the federal government is going to avert its real fiscal problems. And none of those things happened.

Most people in politics, in their moments of off-the-record candor, shake their heads and tsk, tsk about the serious problem of entitlement spending, and then, in a Jack Nicholson moment, blame the American public: “You can’t handle the truth!