The Democratic and Republican parties are Thelma and Louise hurtling toward their cliff. They are accelerating toward disaster, but the roof is down on their convertible, and they’re feeling fine in the sunshine.
Suddenly Thelma snaps round toward Louise and says angrily, “You tried to touch the brakes! I saw you.”
NIKKI HALEY TAKES THE PLUNGE — WILL RON DESANTIS?
Enraged by such a gross and unmerited accusation, Louise retorts, “What?! It’s not me wimping out to avoid catastrophe. D’you think I can’t see your foot twitching over the left pedal?”
So they surge onward toward their mutually assured smash-up.
It’s been like this watching the parties point fingers and trade denials ever since President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress on Feb. 7. Taking advantage of his prime-time audience of 27 million, the president accused Republicans of planning to cut Social Security and Medicare. That’s not their policy, although some, such as Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), have been clumsy enough to be plausibly colored that way.
When Republicans shouted Biden down as a “liar” — Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had said just the day before that the GOP wouldn’t touch either program — the president closed the trap, saying, “We all apparently agree. Social Security and Medicare is [sic] off the books now.” So here we are. Neither party will hit the brakes.
Both are being dishonest. Democrats pretend to believe they can spend as much as they want (the more, the better) without unpleasant consequences. Republicans, fearing voters will punish any hint of doing the right thing, hush up those among them who sound the alarm.
Unreformed Social Security and Medicare payments are unsustainable. They cannot keep going very much longer, let alone forever. We cannot afford them. It’s that simple. Thelma and Louise will soon careen into the abyss and shatter into atoms. Each party knows it and knows the other side knows it. They’re playing chicken, and neither is brave enough to avert calamity.
Social Security and Medicare vacuum up more than half of federal revenues. The latter will cost double by 2033 — just 10 years from now. Its hospital funds run out even sooner, in just five years! Four years later, in 2032, Social Security will collapse.
In the private sector, we jail fraudsters who run Ponzi schemes like this. In the public sector, we reelect them. It might be OK if it was just Thelma and Louise in the car, as it was in the movie. But in real life, we’re all in the back seat behind them, zooming to our doom with the driver and her sidekick. What is our attitude, we who are being carried will-he-nill-he to the bleak end the pols have arranged for us?
A few fiscally hawkish members of the public are staring wide-eyed through the windscreen at the approaching precipice. They push back into their seat with legs rigid in terror, but they are not in control. And anyway, they are a small minority.
Rather more, mostly the young, see their bleak fate and are resigned to it. They long ago realized that Social Security, Medicare, and other handouts from the welfare state wouldn’t last until they reached the threshold age. It’s one of the many features of America that makes their future seem so grim and enervating.
But most passengers are lounging contentedly on the back seat, not much interested in either the drivers and their squabble or the free fall that looms before them. They are apt to meet questions over future benefits with bland assurances or an irritated rejoinder that Social Security taxes are like insurance premiums — we pay in and are owed what we later take out. The government has to pay.
But actually, no, it doesn’t. Whatever the merits of the moral argument, it doesn’t amount to a legal case. The parties are monstrously guilty of fostering the fiction that these payouts are untouchable “entitlements.” But the Supreme Court ruled long ago, in Fleming v. Nestor in 1960, that the taxes we pay do not impose future obligations on Washington. Pols can renege on the deal whenever they want. They’re going to have to, either by choice or because the money will just run out. Most Americans are deluding themselves. Or rather, they are the willing dupes of politicians who promise jam today and jam tomorrow despite knowing the pot is nearly empty.
The idea of willing dupes changes the moral argument. Responsibility in democratic government cuts both ways. Sure, we should hold politicians accountable, and they have a duty to govern with the consent of those who elect them. But the same logic means voters must accept blame for the scoundrels to whom they give power. Politicians are sensitive creatures and respond readily to incentives: If we keep electing them for telling us sugar-coated falsehoods, that’s what they’ll keep telling us.
