You may have heard that my wife Donna and I became grandparents for the first time last week, when our daughter Erica and her husband Kevin Bischof had their first child, Reed, who weighed 7 lbs. and 14 oz. and was 21 inches long. Kevin’s parents are Glen and Linda Bischof who live in Delhi. Everybody’s thrilled and doing great.
I couldn’t help but think about what kind of world, and particularly what kind of country, little Reed was being born into. Without a doubt, the United States of America is, and if we don’t blow it, will continue to be, the greatest nation the world has ever known.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that I believe there is a lack of leadership, a lack of willingness on the part of those we have elected, to face the most critical problems confronting our nation, and to affirmatively deal with them.
The most obvious example of this is our spiraling national debt. It’s now over $16 trillion. We’re adding $1.2 trillion to it this year alone. And paying the interest on the debt is stifling economic growth, and one of the factors preventing our economy from recovering.
Little Reed’s share of this debt is $50,739.80 and he was just born a week ago. Is this fair to him and all the other new little Americans being born every day in this country? I don’t think so.
Another example of an impending disaster being ignored by our leaders is finding a way to fund future Social Security payments. This critical program is on track to run out of money in the not too distant future, putting millions of seniors at risk. People are living longer (which is a good thing), but fewer and fewer workers are supporting a growing number of Social Security recipients. When the program was begun back in 1935, approximately 42 workers supported each recipient because the average life expectancy then was only 58 for men and 62 for women. Today, partly because people are living so much longer, we’re down to about two and a half workers supporting each recipient, and therefore reforming the program is critical.
An additional problem with Social Security is that Washington politicians have been spending Social Security money on things unrelated to Social Security. This MUST be stopped. That’s why I’m a co-sponsor of a bill called the Social Security Preservation Act, which would do just that. It would require that every dollar taken out of a person’s paycheck for Social Security, could only be spent for Social Security, and nothing else.
And finally, education. It needs to be dramatically overhauled in this country. Too often what students are studying, particularly at the college level, is unrelated to where jobs are in the real world. Students in other countries, particularly Asian ones, are cleaning our clocks in critical areas such as Math and Science. The federal government has been shoveling money into higher education for years now. This has resulted in inflated tuition at colleges across America, and more and more college graduates with huge amounts of debt hanging over their heads. Yet another example of Washington stepping in, and making things worse.
These are but a few of the myriad of challenges facing our nation, which are not being dealt with in a serious way by our elected leaders. All Americans deserve better from those who are supposed to be confronting these issues on their behalf. And certainly our newest little Americans, like Reed, have a right to demand better. (Even if they can’t talk yet.)