HOW HE SEES IT We're indebting ourselves to death

By ROBERT WHITCOMB
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
Like alcoholics who think they can take just one drink, many Americans think they can keep adding to their individual and collective debt without worry. I suspect that many believe, like good Americans, that the fate of the United States is ever onward and upward, and there's no debt that hard work and luck can't help them climb out of.
Others, I think, know that the party can't go on forever, and are determined to enjoy today: Buy, borrow and be merry, for tomorrow we go bankrupt. It's no secret, after all, that immediate satisfaction is the mantra of our consumer society.
Thus, Americans squander money on credit-card purchases, addicting themselves to the usurious credit-card rates; they buy far more than they sell abroad, and they build up vast federal deficits with out-of-control entitlement programs, pork-barrel projects and decreased taxes.
They apparently think that the federal deficit is far too boring to get upset about. And, anyway, most Americans want lower taxes and more services. (Who doesn't?)
Grabbing the lion's share
Meanwhile, the Americans who are best organized to get what they want from government (the elderly) seem to believe that it is perfectly fair for them to grab the lion's share of the government's resources. "What's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable." The latest example: prescription-drug coverage that will cost at least three times the projected estimates and transfer even more money into the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, God bless 'em.
While this problem of wanting it all is not new, President Bush and the Republican Congress have done great damage in the past four years with unneeded tax cuts, combined with big spending increases. Sen. John Kerry, for his part, is touting a plan to pay for large new programs by raising taxes only on the richest 2 percent of the population. So there's little hope there, either.
I suspect that the politicians just want to get through their terms without having to impose the much higher taxes and smaller entitlements for the old that seem inevitable. But we're so near the edge of the cliff that whoever takes the oath of office next January will have to face it big-time. And how much longer will foreigners be willing to finance our trade deficit? And when will the euro supplant the dollar as the No. 1 currency as we debase the dollar through runaway borrowing?
Boomers' demand
As for the person elected president in 2008, God help him/her. That's around when the baby boomers will start to retire in droves and demand their Social Security and Medicare.
People are immensely flexible when they have to be, and will survive the great debt crunch as they survived 25 percent unemployment in the Depression. But it's going to be nasty.
XWhitcomb is The Providence Journal's editorial-page editor. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.