There is no future ... there is only the past

It is natural for human beings to look towards the future, to dream of what tomorrow, or twenty years from now may bring. We work for the future, save for the future and plan for the future. It is impossible to conceptualize life without an assumption of a future, and having been born with the ability to hope, we usually endow that future with the possibility of improvement and the attainment of our goals. While expectation for the future may be common to all human beings, it has been especially incorporated into the American consciousness. The idea of the United States is associated with that of a ‘better tomorrow’ and the clichéd concept of the American dream paints a picture in which one’s children will have a better life than oneself. While the United States has not always lived up to its principles and traditions, it has continually looked towards them for guidance and insight.

Today, the federal government seems to have lost sight of them. It acts as though there will be no accountability, no further generations and no future of any kind. By attempting to give the dream of prosperity to the present generation it makes their dreams of the future unattainable. It seems to forget that even the over-rosy depiction of life in the American dream included work in the present to pay forward future fortune.

Since the House of Representatives released its budget proposal, rumblings and murmurings of unhappiness have filled the air. However, whether you think this bill is a politically motivated tragedy or believe (like me) that it is a very small step in the right direction, whether you are concerned about the cuts to Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency or are waiting with trepidation to see whether President Obama will actually veto the bill, your concern only grazes the surface of the real budget issue. In the end, after all the political promises, back room deals, taxes and loans, the United States only has a certain buying power beyond which it cannot borrow or spend. In a capitalistic society, even the government cannot borrow without security or interest and today we have a national debt that, at $14.1 trillion, is utterly out of line with the buying power of the United States. In the end, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, whether you care about the welfare, Head Start, healthcare or national defense, the programs that concern you will be superseded by the national debt. It is the reason the budget proposal tries to cut so deeply. For while paying for discretionary programs is negotiable, paying interest on the national debt is not.

Unlike the future of all the other programs that the federal government usually pays for, the future of national debt interest is not uncertain: it is rising steadily. Today, net interest payments equal $207 billion; but by 2021 it will have risen to $840 billion (according to the White House Office of Management and Budget Office). It will have outstripped the costs of all discretionary spending (which includes education, transportation, federal regulatory committees such as the EPA and almost all else which Congress has direct control of) and even of Medicaid. It will be exceeded only be Social Security which will cost $1.26 trillion by 2021 and defense spending which will cost $914 billion. Even compared to these last two expenses the interest due to the national debt is shocking for while the defense budget will only have increased by $6 billion, the debt interest will have increased by $633 billion, more than one hundred times as much. It must be admitted that the United States economic future looks bleak when interest on preexisting loans accounts for a vast percent of total expenditure.

However the first impression of the picture just painted is rosy in comparison to what this really means. The estimated interest cost of $840 billion by 2021 is just that: the cost of interest. It does not include even a penny paid towards the actual debt. And without paying down the actual debt, that number can do nothing but rise with inflation and interest rates, eating away more and more of the money Congress has to spend upon educating our children, defending our country, refurbishing our healthcare system, subsidizing our energy prices or paying for research in medicine, or technology. By 2021, if the interest on the national debt were spread between every single citizen of the United States, we would each have to pay $2,500. If the debt itself were spread among all of us we would have to pay $44,900 each. Thus it is not that the foreseeable economic future of the United States is bleak, it is non-existent. Our generation, our children’s generation and even our grandchildren’s generation will be paying the debt of our parent’s generation. Not only is there no future, there is no present, there is only the past.