December 18, 2009
Dishing Out Some Shock on Debt
By David Broder

The 34 names are familiar to anyone who has followed economic policy in Washington for the past generation, one-third of them former chairmen or members of key committees of Congress, seven of them former directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget, two of them former comptroller generals of the United States, seven of them former directors of the Congressional Budget Office, and one of them -- Paul Volcker -- a former chairman of the Federal Reserve System and now an adviser to President Obama.

Both political parties are well represented in their number. But they came together this week as signatories of a nonpartisan manifesto, essentially a stark warning to the president and Congress and a plea for action on behalf of the next generation.


The United States, they unanimously said, is facing "a debt-driven crisis -- something previously viewed as almost unfathomable in the world's largest economy." Under the impact of the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression, the federal government ran a deficit of $1.4 trillion this past year. The rescue effort was necessary, but in 2009 alone, the public debt grew 31 percent, from $5.8 trillion to $7.6 trillion, rising from 41 percent to 53 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Unless strong remedial steps are taken in the years just ahead, the debt is projected to rise to 85 percent of GDP by 2018 and 100 percent four years later. By that time, barely a dozen years from now, these sober-sided, deeply experienced folks say, the American economy is likely to be in ruins.

All of us have become accustomed to hearing lamentations -- or partisan accusations -- about the changes in the annual budget deficits, the gap between federal revenue and spending in a particular year. But this commission deliberately shifted its focus from the deficit to the underlying debt.

The reason was explained to me by one of the Democrats, Alice Rivlin, formerly a director of both the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget. "Previously, when we were worried about deficits, we could take comfort in the fact that the debt was not very high relative to the economy," she said. "But now that debt has shot up. The cushion has gone. If the same thing [a severe recession] happened again, we wouldn't be able to borrow to deal with it."

In addition to robbing us of the flexibility to deal with future crises, the rapidly rising debt level could push up interest rates, threatening economic recovery; slow the growth of wages; depress living standards; make the United States even more dependent on foreign lenders; and leave us vulnerable to a shock wave if those lenders lose confidence in our ability to repay the loans.

To avoid those consequences, these experts -- writing under the auspices of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget -- suggest a series of steps.

First, they want Obama in his State of the Union address to urge Congress to join in a pledge to stabilize the debt at no higher than 60 percent of GDP by 2018. (Remember, it is 53 percent now.) This would require actions by Congress and the administration to start reducing the projected annual deficits, which add to the debt, starting in 2012.

That would make debt-management an economic priority once the effects of the current severe recession have eased. To ensure that the pledge is kept, those who signed this report would ask Congress and the president to set up an enforcement mechanism that would automatically reduce spending or increase taxes when the debt target is missed in any year from 2012 to 2018.

This is stiff medicine, but this report's message is that temporizing on this issue poses such perils to the nation's future that the risk is unacceptable.

When Congress this week ducked its responsibility again by deciding to enact a temporary, two-month increase in the debt ceiling, the need for a shock treatment like this report could not be plainer.

davidbroder@washpost.com
(c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group

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If you've ever wondered what American-style English sounds like to non-speakers - the actual sound and flow of it, without the content - this Italian "pop song" is probably as close as you're going to get without some sort of terrible brain trauma. Also, the song is pretty great, it wouldn't sound out of place on that "Nuggets" anthology.

Quiet times around here. Eleanor's working hard getting pieces together for a joint Giant Robot art show she's doing in January. I'm plugging away on Set to Sea. We've been drinking lots of hot toddys in these cold and rainy days.

Yeesh, Christmas is sneaking up on me fast. Time to declare war on this here Christmas.

Currently reading: To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
Currently listening: Fear and Whiskey (Mekons)/The Age of Faith (Will Durant audiobook)

Doodling. The eternal struggle continues!

EDIT:

I have a new idea: sit for 15 minutes and then stop. Repeat the next day. I'm setting myself up to fail when I do nothing but work and sleep for three days and expect to be ridiculously calm the next.

In other news, being single is totally boring.

Did you know? My print collection is large. http://sayunclecomics.deviantart.com/store/

My field education assignment is to visit the elderly in a local retirement home. The youngest resident there is 85, the oldest 99. They're all mentally alert, though one lady who had a stroke several years ago cannot speak very quickly. My partner and I go every Sunday and we have "Faith Sharing." In practice, he and I pretty much give second and third homilies on the day's readings and then we ask the others for any thoughts or reflections they have. Ray and I often have to be interpreters since the old folks are losing their voices and their hearing; they almost never hear each other. On our last session of the fall semester, a little old lady in her mid nineties asked me a deep theological question: "Did Mary feel any of the pains of childbirth?"

I responded that while we do not know how precisely Jesus was born, we know that Mary remained a virgin afterward. When Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden, part of the condition of Original Sin was that the pains of childbirth would be greatly increased. Mary was exempt from Original Sin from the moment of her conception, so it follows that she would not have felt the same pain as other mothers do. She did, however, experience a pain that no other mother has ever felt - seeing her Son, God Incarnate, nailed to a cross.

She was satisfied with my answer. Eventually she told me, "About thirty years ago, there was a priest giving a retreat in my parish. I asked him that same question and he got angry with me for asking something unrelated to his topic." Isn't that something? Thirty years ago she was in her sixties and she even remembered his exact words, which I won't repeat here. I don't think many priests realize how much the people notice and remember the things they do... and the things they don't do.

I'm going to post up S2S three times a week for a while, since I've missed so many days recently.

Secret Science Alliance may be sold out on Amazon right now (they're bringing out a 2nd printing, but it probably wn't hit stores till January) but if you need it for Christmas and have a spare $161.84, this guy can hit you up on Ebay! And holy crap, someone on Amazon's trying to get $130.05 for a used copy! Who are these people?

if you are in dallas i will be there seeing family for christmas and doing a signing at lonestar comics on dec. 23rd. okay

i will be closing book orders on thursday morning i think so i can finish shipping and not think about that over christmas. i will reopen them early january

animal tropical - 20 miles

A little late, from this past Halloween. Before we went on our parade, we had some fun drawing labels for this pale ale I had just brewed. I wanted to document them before I scraped them off the bottles. Most of these were drawn by David Mack, Aaron Fu, or the lovely Eleanor Davis.

As a seminarian, I hear a lot of stories about priests from lay people. I wish it were the case, but the ontological change in a man's being that takes place at ordination does not alter his character. The old saying goes, "Like seminarian, like priest." If you're chronically late to class as a seminarian, you'll be chronically late to appointments as a priest (believe it or not, some guys come in to class late even though THEY LIVE IN THE BUILDING.) There are all kinds of priests just as there are all kinds of men. Saints and monsters are just as rare among priests as among the general population; most of them fall somewhere in between. I've heard stories about priests who were saintly, outstanding men. In this decade we've all heard the stories about the priests who were monsters. But the ones I hear about most, and the ones I've seen the most since becoming a Catholic, are neither saints nor monsters, just indifferent.

You see it most often at Mass. It's not that they're obviously bored or distracted. But they always manage to communicate the feeling that the really important stuff isn't there on the altar. They're less mystified by the sacrifice of Calvary as they are that lay people think it matters so much. They breeze through the Mass, often taking liberties with the words of the prayers, adding some commentary or jokes as they go along. That stuff is so boring you see and the people aren't smart enough to understand it all anyway. Genuflections, kneeling, and silence make them uncomfortable. That's why there must always be music blaring from the speakers, why Mr. Caruso must always be bellowing into the microphone, and why we need to finish distributing communion as quickly as possible. The Mass isn't so much the intersection of the present with eternity and the one sacrifice on the cross as it is a communal meal where we worship God in each other. And since Father has to "preside" at this communal meal, he always has to be in public speaking mode and show off what a warm and pastoral guy he is. Repentance and conversion aren't as urgent as accepting oneself because there is no hell to be rescued from. People don't need confession, they need psychotherapy. I've got better things to do - like improve my golf game with the parish high rollers - than sit in a little box for an hour every Saturday.

God has blessed me with two outstanding priests as my academic adviser and spiritual director. Both have told me that there are times to fight and times to just play the game. Some people tell me I need to be more prudent about what I say on the internets or about wearing the cassock in public. Well, part of playing game includes knowing the rules of the game. As long as you always be where you're supposed to be and do what you're supposed to do, you can be as much of a traditionalist as you want - just don't be a jerk about it. I'm also told that with my grades, if I'm not careful, I'll never get into the parish because they'll ask me to become a canon lawyer or get a doctorate or something. I take that last one more seriously because I definitely want to be in the parish and start restoring the many things which have been taken from the people over the past forty years. But I'll go wherever the Church wants me to go.

I served in my home parish this morning. Afterward, one of the deacons waved me aside and asked me, "Why do you wear the cassock?"

"It's the appropriate attire for priests and seminarians and a symbol of our faith. And I like it better than the clerical suit."

"Well, I grew up in the pre-Vatican II Church and..."

"I know that Catholics... of a certain generation associate it with..."

"Yes, and that's why priests of our diocese do not wear the cassock. And you, as a seminarian, might be mistaken for an ordained minister. That's why we deacons don't wear the collar, because we are of the people."

"But you just said priests of our diocese don't wear the cassock. I know that, which is another reason why I wear this: because that way fewer people will mistake me for one. Everyone in this parish knows I'm a seminarian and not a priest. And even if someone addresses me as 'Father' it only takes a second to correct them. I'm not a priest, but I'm not a regular man either. I'm not attending a secular university where I can hit the bars and pick up chicks or something. Why should I hide what I am and what I'm doing?"

"You need to ask yourself is that's the kind of attitude you want to bring to the people. And you should bring it up with your spiritual director."

"With all due respect sir, the overwhelming majority of lay people I've met almost cry with joy when they see a young man in a cassock. I'll talk to my spiritual director, but I think you need to talk with yours as well."

Five and a half years to go. There will be a lot of retirements and funerals in the mean time, thanks be to God.