In 1946, as the Soviet Union moved to subjugate Europe, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.) famously told President Harry Truman that he had to “scare the hell out of the American people” to get them to support aid for endangered Greece and Turkey.
On March 12, 1947, following that advice, Truman delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress that persuaded a penny-pinching, isolationist-inclined Republican Congress that America’s well-being required spending $400 million to begin fighting what became the Cold War.
In 2010, it’s clear to practically everyone who’s studied the question that America’s future is endangered by surging debt, but somebody is going to have to “scare the hell out of the American people” to get real — which means painful — action to get it under control.
At the same time, this “somebody” — President Barack Obama, for sure, but ideally some top Republican leaders, too — needs to make it clear that America can boom again if it gets its fiscal house in order.
In fact, I’d bet that a bipartisan pact to cut spending, raise revenue and reform the tax system would inspire such renewed confidence in the U.S. economy and political system that now-uncertain lenders would lend, employers would hire and foreigners would regain respect for America.
On the “scare” side, the authors of two new commission reports on the debt do use words like “unsustainable” and “unmanageable” and quote Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying that it represents “the single biggest threat to our national security.”
In a breakfast meeting with reporters last week, the two co-chairmen of Obama’s debt commission used phrases such as “devastating” and “like Greece and Ireland” to describe the fate that will befall the U.S. if the debt isn’t controlled.
Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) said that “if we don’t deal with the debt, the markets will do it for us. And it won’t be a slippery slope. It will be swift, and it will be disastrous.”
Such words arrest one’s attention, but are they enough to persuade the public to pressure Congress to extend the Social Security retirement age to 69 (in 2075), limit Medicare payments, cut the defense budget by $100 billion a year, cap the mortgage interest deduction at $500,000 and raise gasoline taxes?
If the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll is any indication, the answer is no and the case needs to be made far more vividly to the public than it has been up to now.
When voters were asked about those ideas — put forward by Simpson and commission Co-Chairman Erskine Bowles — only 25 percent said “good” and 45 percent “bad.”
Sixty percent said they were “uncomfortable” with Medicare, Social Security and defense cuts, and 59 percent were “uncomfortable” with increased gasoline taxes, limits on mortgage interest deductions and changes in the corporate tax rate.
Rep. Bill Cassidy has his blood drawn by Alesha Barbour during a free hepatitis screening in the Rayburn House Office Building hosted by the Congressional Viral Hepatitis Caucus to recognize "National Viral Hepatitis Testing Day."
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