Trouble at ye old Money Tree

 

 

"Hey! Take as much as you want! It can always grow more..."

This weekend I watched the first episode to Season 3 of the House of Cards. For those who have not yet jumped into the pool of binge watching this Netflix produced show, I can't recommend it highly enough. It is truly excellent, and will make your distain for the crap which goes on in Washington get even worse.

Anyway, this is NOT a spoiler alert. The first episode of Season 3 starts out with President Underwood telling his cabinet he really needs a jobs bill which will cement his legacy. However to fund this bill, he will need to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. President Underwood tells his cabinet (none of whom thinks this a good idea) that he now has no choice - these entitlement programs are bankrupting the country.

Today in the paper was an article about a woman who is receiving subsidized ObamaCare. As a registered Democrat, she is madder than a hornet at ALL Republicans. She is afraid the Supreme Court is going to rule against ObamaCare, and thereby take away her subsidy. Currently she pays $23 a month, and the federal government picks up the other $475 a month. And where does that $475 a month come from? Why the money tree of course. This newly created subsidy will soon join the other entitlements in accelerating the bankruptcy of our country.

So this is it in a nutshell. There is trouble at "ye old money tree". Most of us know it, a few don't know it, and most of our "leaders" are lying to us about it. Instead of trying to come up with VIABLE solutions which will allow current entitlements to last for decades to come, our "leaders" have once again kicked the can down the street. Not only that, but they have also thrown gas on the fire. They have added a fourth entitlement (ObamaCare).

There is coming a time in the future, maybe in the near future, when our entitlements will put this country in a no-win position. Just as President Underwood said he needed to gut them as he had no choice, I can also see that coming as a default position in real life. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (aka Bowles-Simpson) was completed in late 2010. This commission, set up by President Obama, came up with some tough love items to help our debt become more manageable. They would not eliminate the debt, but their implementation would make a good start in controlling its growth. That was almost five years ago. Nothing, I mean nothing, has been done. Our debt is now over $18T, and the entitlements continue to grow like weeds.

We must all of us, continue to keep pressure on our elected representatives to fix this mess. If we don't fix it, it will for sure fix us. And that is real life - not just an episode from a Netflix original production.