At What Cost?

It's getting crazy here. Picked up a class for a colleague who's out sick this semester and am scrambling to get together a plan for that (apparently she didn't have one either). Plus some other work stuff has undermined that resolution to blog again, but not smothered it. I've had plenty of blog fodder on the mind.

The major topic in domestic politics lately is federal spending. An important one to be sure, though I'm not entirely down with the consensus view that spending that spending must be reigned in regardless of consequences.

The national debt is a serious problem, but I don't think the preferred tool for reducing it--drastic cuts across the board--is the one that can do the job best. In many cases I'd say it amounts cutting the nation off at the knees. Case in point: reduced funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Launched by president Obama in 2009, the Initiative promised 475 million dollars for cleaning up pollution, fighting invasive species, and other measures to improve the health of the lakes. Obama's new budget proposal reduces this to 350 million; the Republican budget plan would slash it to 225 million. Given the economic value of the lakes, this is incredibly short sighted. Why risk fisheries, clean water, tourism, for a small reduction in federal spending?

Of course, one could respond that everyone wants the cuts to fall on someone else. No question about that, but my point is that some of these cuts shouldn't be falling at all, or shouldn't hit as hard as they do. The question that keeps coming to my mind is, Why is weakening environmental protection or education or consumer safety measure acceptable, but imposing a slight tax increase unconscionable? There's no question of whether you're going to pay to address problems, or many of them, that the country and the world face. The choice is whether you want to pay up front or wait until a crisis point hits and pay a much dearer price, both in cash and in terms of overall well being.

With regard to matters like the great lakes, health care, infrastructure and education, to name a few, I'll gladly pay up front. There seems to be a consensus among economists that some kind of revenue increase is necessary, though the political class seems to wave this off, either because they've climbed into office on the mound of anti-tax rhetoric that's calcified on the republic over the last thirty years, or because they fear taking a run at it would shatter their own political fortunes.

Of course, there's plenty of popular resistance to tax increases. Their benefits are uncertain and distant, whereas their costs are clear and immediate. Yet at some point the costs of the cuts under discussion now will be of the second type, and they may be staggering.