Ethics in Debt and HealthCare

By Rock Cramer, La Paz County Farmer and Business Professional

Presented during “Call to the Public” La Paz County, AZ Board of Supervisors Regular Meeting Tuesday Sept 8, 2009

Madam Chairman, as of today in 2009, our generation, the “baby boomers”, is leaving those that follow us a mountain of debt and the false expectation that they will have Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “entitlements” as we know them. What’s worse is that the kids will not have the opportunities we have had. We are systematically, step by step, dollar by dollar, snuffing out the American dream for all but a very very few. Unless enough of us become real citizens of this great country very soon we will have spent our children’s future. We owe them something better.

At the end of 2007 our national debt was a little over $5 trillion dollars. In 2019, just ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that we will more than triple this to $17.1 trillion. A number with twelve zeros behind it is hard to comprehend. A look at what only the interest on this debt would be makes it easier to understand. At a 5% interest rate, which is reasonable by historical standards over the last 50 years, the annual interest cost on $17 trillion of debt is $850 billion. This one year of interest is over five times greater than the entire federal budget passed in 1968, the year I graduated from high school. It exceeds the federal budget passed in 1987….and these numbers don’t include the estimated $50 trillion in unfunded off-budget entitlements we as baby boomers expect in retirement. News flash: there is no “Lock Box”. In my working lifetime we will have allowed our political class to give us crushing debt that guarantees a lower standard of living and scant opportunity for younger generations. Call us the ethics challenged generation. We can’t possibly be proud of this legacy. Indeed, we should be so embarrassed that we are compelled to do something about it.

There are only five ways for the federal government to reduce its annual deficit:

1. Enhance growth in the private sector economy.

2. Raise Tax Rates.

3. Reduce general fund program expenditures, including the military.

4. Reduce entitlement benefits.

5. Increase entitlement rationing.

There are two revenue raising choices and three cost savings choices. There is a sixth choice when we speak of paying off debt accumulated in prior years. That would be inflation….pay off old debt with inflated dollars….not a good choice under any circumstance. When marginal tax rates go above 30% for corporations and business owners the two revenue choices are in conflict. In other words, they have limits. That leaves the cost savings choices. There are no other choices.

If the government is expected to provide retirement and healthcare there must be serious benefit reductions, there must be serious rationing. There are no other choices. Everyone should take a look at what’s known as the “Reaper Curve” used by White House healthcare advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. It shows how the government makes healthcare rationing choices for the benefit of society. Using limited government healthcare resources, society must care for the young before the old. Like it or not, this curve is accurate with regard to both the economics of government healthcare and society’s best interests….ABSENT ANY CONSIDERATION OF WHAT IS ETHICAL OR OUR CONSTITUTION.

The "Golden Rule" is the clear and simple essence of ethical behavior. An applied sense of ethics is, indeed, the first and most important contribution or commitment that any individual can offer to others. The millennia proven universal principles of ethics and ethical behavior, in the form of “Natural Law”, are mostly learned from our parents and from studying religious doctrine. Natural Law for the faithful is divined by God.

However we arrive there, we must all understand and embrace the notion of Natural Law because the supremacy of Natural Law is the foundation of our American culture and exceptionalism. The premise of the Declaration of Independence is that as individuals we have “certain unalienable rights”….fundamental and eternal human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness….Natural Law. As Mark Levin points out, these “…rights are not conferred on man by man and, therefore, cannot legitimately be denied to man by man.” It is the evident personal commitment to ethical behavior, indeed, to live by the Golden Rule, that demonstrates respect for and belief in man’s unalienable rights.

Madam Chairman, our Washington D.C. political class seems to have forgotten the Golden Rule. They have retirement and healthcare benefits that are better than over 99% of corporate CEO’s. The federal (and state) healthcare reforms we really need could be outlined in a series of paragraphs on no more than two pages. In this complex, emotion driven debate there is only one thing that we as citizens can rely on: The Golden Rule Test ….whether or not all federal elected officials and all federal government employees and retirees are included when any healthcare bill is signed into law.