Tough Choices Need Courage

We have seen some rapid action lately on some of our most pressing national problems. The stimulus package and energy legislation mandating better gas mileage and emissions controls are examples. The bank bailouts, distasteful as they were, were also necessary to prevent financial petrification and are now starting to be paid back with interest. But when problems are less than immediately catastrophic our current milieu seems to have a great deal of difficulty coming to grips with them. The problem is often lack of courage. Leaders know certain things must be done, but they shrink at asking the people they represent to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve them. The politicians are too often afraid of not getting re-elected. Would that more had a priority of doing what is right and needed rather than what will sell at re-election time.

You certainly have to place a certain amount of blame on the public itself. Too often they demand services but somehow feel they can have all they want without paying for them. Too many office-seekers have been all too eager to make the promises that have encouraged that mindset over the years.

For one example close to home, most of California's water system was put in place when the state's population stood at 18 million. It gives you an idea how well that system was designed 45 years ago when you consider we now have 38 million and most of the state's needs are still being met. Yet, inevitably, we have outgrown it, and increasingly, gaps are appearing. There are effective plans combining conservation with new storage to deliver the quantity now needed. But the legislature is stymied over how to fund it. The Republicans want it all to be by a state bond. The Democrats say the interest on the bond would add another $1 billion a year to an already unbalanced budget. They want to fund it 1/3 by bond and the rest by user fees. While they argue fields lie fallow and the problem grows more acute. You just can't get around the fact that with the state budget the way it is, the money to build this project that both sides agree is necessary will have to entail some form of making those who use the water pay for it. But wedded to their no-tax pledges, the Republicans will not face reality.

The same kinds of dynamics are at work with problems like the coming shortfalls in Social Security. It really isn't rocket science. One or some combination of three things will have to happen: Either the payroll deductions for employees and employers will have to be raised, the retirement age will have to be raised or benefits will have to be cut. If neither of the first two are done, benefits will need to be cut to 73% of what they are now. So, why don't they act? Because nobody wants to tell the people the truth, that's why. They "kick the can down the road," and hope for a miracle, or at least put things off for someone else to have to deal with later--presumably after present congressmen and women are no longer in office.

We'll see how it pays out with health care, too. There are actually two main problems that need to be solved. One is the 47 million people are not covered. That has to be fixed. The other is that costs keep going up faster than economic growth and inflation, the rendering the system unsustainable and guaranteed to lead to a crash like the housing-banking-derivatives crash we have just been through when the economy can no longer support the price structure. Those two are the bedrock needs that have to be faced. Instead, too much of the debate has been stuck on outlandish fears and gotcha points. I happen to feel a "public option" would help a great deal to keep prices in line. But there are other paths to that goal, such as really stringent price controls that could accomplish the same purpose, though they would make government much more directly intrusive in the economics of the system. If leaders actually want to solve the problem, they will have to decide. But that would, like the other problems mentioned, take some honesty and courage.

This is an important enough issue it would be very noble for members of congress to truly solve the problem, even if it would lead to their defeat next time around. There is something to be said for being able to look one's self in the eye in the mirror and say, "I saved thousands of lives," or, "I helped keep the U.S. economy competitive." It would be nice to see that kind of courage and integrity in evidence in our own day a little more.

Playing Politics with the Threat Level

The latest Bush Administration memoir, this one by the first Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, will soon come out with intimations of an effort by Administration heavyweights to raise the terrorism threat level on the eve of the 2004 election in an effort to arouse public fear and boost the President's re-election chances. Here you can see a synopsis in the New York Times, and go to the U.S. News & World Report "Washington Whisper" item that originally broke the story.

Sources say Ridge's soon-to-be-released book, The Test of our Times: America Under Siege and How We Can Be Safe Again, details strenuous efforts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft to get Ridge to move the terror threat level up to "orange" the weekend before the November, 2004 election. This occurred despite unanimous opinion within the DHS that no intelligence existed to support such a finding, according to Ridge. He adds that the episode confirmed his inclination to resign immediately following the election rather than continue to be associated with those who played politics with the American people's security and fast and loose with the truth.

Ridge's book joins a growing list of tell-all revelations that have appeared from Bush Administration figures in the few months since he left office. Others have shed light on the case of the fired U.S. Attorneys, fabrications elucidated by former Press Secretary Scott McClellan and revelations that Ashcroft himself resisted pressure to approve unconstitutional actions from his sickbed in the hospital.

These confessions and accounts go far toward confirming what most on the left had been contending all along--that Bush and his team were a bunch of shamelessly manipulative liars who frequently subordinated constitutional and ethical standards to the exigencies of political gain. That is all to the good. But they also make me think about the tellers, too. It is well that the truth is finally getting out. It is something of note when men like Ridge and McClellan ostensibly give up insider positions of power as matters of conscience. But don't you wonder why they waited so long to come forward? They could have resigned and told their tales before the 2004 election. Perhaps a raft of these before the vote would have cost Bush a close election and saved the country from at least the last four years of W's misgovernance.

By coming clean, such figures act to assuage their consciences, add to the historical record and perhaps stand as cautionary examples to warn against the abuses of the future. But what they fell short of doing was acting with the complete integrity a democratic public must have in order to make an informed decision. The cold truth is that these men were more abettors than whistle blowers when it could have done the most good. And as a result, the whole nation suffered.