Sixty-Five Cents Apiece

It’s a “blot” on Wisconsin’s electoral process: $3.39 million collected by Wisconsin legislative candidates in 2005. That, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (WDC), is a “budget-year record.”

Question: what makes it a “blot?” The amount? What if they’d only raised $3 million? Or $2.9 million?

Or was it the “budget-year record?” Is that what makes it a “blot?”

If so, we’ve got a low threshold for blots. That $3.39 million is only 3% more than was raised in 2001. Less than one percent increase per year.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is aghast – the sheer number of dollars prove we have a problem. The idea is to throw the big number out – three point three nine million! – and then gasp in horror, hoping the rest of us will all gasp, too.

Because it’s so much money. Its just so dirty.

By the way, $3.39 million is about 65 cents per capita – that’s what legislators raised in 2005. Less, I’ll bet, than we spend on toilet paper each month.

Kinda funny when you look at it that way – what if every Wisconsinite checked the campaign fund box on their tax forms? We’d spend even more money on campaigns.

Would the Journal Sentinel still freak out?

Yes, there’s a slimy residue on political contributions. A perceived shadow of doubt: what do the contributors want in return?

But there’s the rub: it’s not what the contributors want that’s important. It’s what they get.

And it’s not really even what they get. It’s: would they have gotten it, had they not given money?

What came first? The money or the vote?

One candidate raises money by telling people: “I stand for this, this, and this. Will you contribute to my campaign to support that?”

A second candidate says: “I’ll vote your way if you contribute to my campaign. If you don’t, I can always go to the other side.”

The point: the money alone doesn’t make politics dirty. It’s how the money is raised. The Journal Sentinel assumes that every dollar raised is raised under those circumstances – the second guy’s way.

Raising campaign cash looks dirty. It feels dirty. We automatically assume there’s some quid pro quo going on – legislators are promising something in exchange.

Odds are: that’s exactly right. People are getting something for their money. The question is: did the vote follow the money, or vice versa?

Did a strongly pro-life candidate promise to vote pro-life, and receive contributions based on that promise? If so, the contributors got something: representation of their beliefs.

Did a contributor dangle a big contribution in exchange for a promised vote? That’s more problematic, but it still depends on the candidate’s motive: would the candidate have voted that way, even without the money?

To “clean up” politics, we have to be able to tell the difference.

And…we can, to a degree. Wisconsin law requires that politicians disclose who their contributors are, and how much they gave, and when. We also know how our politicians vote. Groups like the WDC and Common Cause Wisconsin make it their business to know, and inform the rest of us, when they think they see something dirty.

One caveat: candidate A – the squeaky clean one – told us he believes this, this, and this. But suddenly, after a few years in office, he starts voting for that, that, and that. And “that” supporters give him lots of money.

Corruption. It happens, when you put money and power and human beings together in the same room. Simply pointing it out may not be enough, when a politician is entrenched in a safe seat.

Thus, the call to limit the money.

So: we limit what candidates can spend. As we’ve seen, that doesn’t stop campaign spending – it just shifts it to independent groups.

So: we limit what independent groups can spend. Now we have to define what groups, who’s limited, under what circumstances.

Limit the big ones, you’ll create lots of little ones. Now limit the little ones – but how little? The FEC has already considered going after individual, independent bloggers, with minimal financial outlays.

Minimal, like 65 cents per person. That’s what we’re talking about.

The drive for campaign finance reform is a drive for the perfect law, and there’s no such thing. The best we can do: pay attention. Bring corruption to light. Thank those groups who dedicate themselves to that.

Limiting the money won’t stop the corrupt from being corrupt – it will only end up limiting free speech for all of us.

Referendums On My Mind

And that’s why I oppose the referendum.

That’s how I ended my column last week. I was referring, naturally, to the Baraboo School District referendum coming up in April – they want $1.5 million more a year over the next five years.

But, as my wife graciously pointed out to me, I never once mentioned the Baraboo referendum. In fact, I never used the word “referendum” until that final line.

Of course, that column was more generally about government spending, not specifically about referendums. And anyway, she knew which referendum I meant.

Still, as my wife tenderly suggested, someone else reading it might have come away confused. Referendum? What referendum?

It’s true that I oppose this referendum, for general reasons (see last week’s column), and for specific ones. It’s a band-aid for a festering wound. The amounts they’re asking for won’t help for longer than the first year. They call it a “deficit,” but governments always have deficits. They never have enough money.

Ever.

Plus, they never really discussed other budget options, before voting to ask for more. Never tried to work it out some other way.

So I’ve got my reasons. But this brought us around to another question:

Would I ever support a referendum?

The answer: I’m not sure, but I’m thinking…no.

Oh, it’s not outside the limits of my imagination. I can speculate about circumstances that would win my support. But those circumstances aren’t now, and I don’t see them coming anytime soon. Certainly not within the next 20 years.

Mainly, that’s because I think government and government schools already spend too much. Why would I vote to give them more?

As of 2004, we were spending $10,505 per student. That’s up 24% since 2000 – about 5% growth per year. The numbers are a little more modest in Baraboo, but the point still holds – we’re spending a lot.

A lot more than I could afford if it was tuition.

We should mention, I suppose, that Wisconsin’s students are at the top of the national game. In every measure of academic success, our kids do very well. So. The money’s worth it.

Except, if money equaled success, states like New Jersey (where they spend a lot more) would be at the top. They’re not. States like Montana and Utah (where they spend comparatively little) would be near the bottom. They’re not.

Not to mention, private schools would be little more than incubators for the nation’s ditch-diggers.

There’s a good question for you: why do private schools do so well, for so much less?

These are not unfounded assumptions. According to the last census, the average annual tuition at a private school was $4,689. At a Catholic school: $3,236.

Good hard data on outcomes is a hard to come by, but the National Center for Educational Statistics says private school students perform better in every subject, at every grade level, than their government school peers.

The data strongly suggests: private schools spend less, and turn out better students.

Here’s one possible reason for that: sending your kid to a private school takes more effort on your part. It’s a commitment. Parents of private school students are more likely to take an active interest in their children’s education.

An assumption on my part, but I think a sound one.

So perhaps the reason government schools cost so much is: we’re trying to make up for those families which don’t take an active interest.

That may be part of our problem – there are people in the world who won’t do for themselves, so we take it upon ourselves to do for them.

Noble. Generous. Charitable. Worthwhile, when the non-ambition of others hurts their own children but little else. And that’s what we’ve done – we’ve stepped in to try to fill the gap.

It’s a fool’s task. The harder we try, the more money we spend, the more programs we create, the more people will hold out their hands. The welfare state taught us that.

Or it should have. Once down that road, there’s very little to slow us down. There’s no objective endpoint. No point at which we can simply agree: we’re doing enough.

Is there? How much? Tell me. Twelve grand? Fifteen? More?

And then…even at 5% annual increases, how long will that be enough? A little voice is telling me – not for long.

So I’m left with my questions. Why so much? And why never enough?

I’ll need answers to those, before I vote yes.

No.

Psst. Guess what? There was an election today. All over Wisconsin, people trickled to the polls and voted in…what’s the opposite of “droves”?

I wouldn’t have known it, if I didn’t browse through several newspapers online. There wasn’t a single contest anywhere in my home town.

And even if there was – it’s a Spring election primary. Yawn.

That won’t be the case, come the April general election. Maybe no candidates on my local ballot – I’m not sure. If there are, here’s how they can get my vote:

Not through positions, or phone calls, or knocking on my door, but by having a name that starts with “no.” Or ends with “no.” Or has an “n” and an “o”, together, in that order, anywhere in their name. I’ll be much more likely to vote for them, if that’s the case.

Because that’s how I intend to vote this April. No. And no. Twice.

Only twice, I think, because there can’t possibly be time to get another referendum on our ballot, and I’m just not into voter fraud.

Anyway, two is enough. I barely have enough righteous umbrage as it is.

The first: the anti-war referendum that I’ve written about before, and will again. The one demanding an “immediate phased withdrawal” of our troops from Iraq.

Twenty or so communities in Wisconsin are holding these referendums. Al Qaeda and other like-minded bad guys could hardly have hoped for a better sign that their strategy is working.

That strategy, they’ve made no secret, is not to beat us militarily. They can’t stand against our troops, and they know it. Instead, they’ve taken pages from our own Vietnam history, and from our withdrawal from Somalia. Force us to take the long, hard road. That’s their strategy. Over time, the Americans will lose heart and want to quit.

That’s what this referendum says: we want to quit. Hang on just a little longer, Al Qaeda, because we’re about done. Soon enough, job done or not, we’ll hide ourselves inside our own borders again. It’ll be just like the 1990s.

The 480 or so people who signed the petition to get that referendum on our ballot do, of course, have the right to wish for that. I neither understand nor appreciate their point of view, as I’m sure they neither understand nor appreciate mine. I simply hope theirs doesn’t make things harder on our troops, and on our future. I think it will.

The other referendum: to spend an additional $1.5 million on our schools in each of the next five years. Not as far-reaching or as potentially dangerous as the first, but just as troubling in its own way.

Troubling, for all the obvious reasons: taxes already take nearly a dollar out of every three earned in Wisconsin, and that’s before you add in all the fees and assessments and other various and sundry costs of doing business with Our Benevolent Masters.

Not to mention the Borg-like inevitability of government and its wondrous programs. It can’t be stopped. Slowed, maybe. For a little while. But soon enough, it will overtake every effort, and worse: it’ll get you hooked. You’ll become an advocate, railing against the calls for restraint and lower taxes that threaten your own personal government-protected interest.

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

End nerdist aside.

The school board’s problem: way too much pressure for a referendum. They slewed it together in just a few short days, voted 4-3 to go ahead, but never really had a chance to hash out the details. Things like: how much do we need next year? And five years from now? And: what are our other options?

Nope. One day they announced a $1.5 million deficit. The next, they announced a list of cuts. The next came the Great Multitude of Anger directed at those cuts. The next, they were presented with a petition for a referendum. And finally, the last day, they voted to have the referendum.

At least, it seems like it happened that fast.

One and a half million a year for the next five years does not, of course, solve their problem. That’s how much they need (or say they need) to balance the budget next year. The year after that…it won’t be enough anymore.

And then…what? Another referendum?

Ah, what the hell. It’s for the children.

So. Noah Novak, here’s your chance. Get your name on the ballot, and you’ve got my vote. I won’t see past the first two letters.

Holding Back the Glacier

It’s the inevitability of it all.

Government spending has become a self-replicating monolith, too big to understand, too powerful to stop. It’s a glacier, moving ever forward, covering more and more of the landscape with every passing year. The next time you look, it’s come an inch further. Then another, and then another.

But you never actually notice it moving.

And you can’t push it back. Oh, you could stand in one spot for a little while, blow on it with a hair dryer, keep one little place from moving up.

But then, before you know it, the rest of it has moved past you.

Nobody ever tried to stop a glacier – whoever was around back when the glacier covered two thirds of Wisconsin, they just lived their lives around it, right? It was just a fact of life. A force of nature. There was no more doing anything about the glacier than there was getting the baby back from the sabertooth.

Putting the toothpaste back in the tube. The apple back onto the Tree.

That’s government spending.

It’s all well and good to talk about “how much it costs to educate a child.” And how much it costs to keep someone in a nursing home. And to keep qualified cops on the street. And to keep the potholes filled. And, and, and, and, and.

But that’s the narrow view. The “we need this” view. Every single spending item, whether it’s large or small, has a constituency – some group of people who take that view with regard to that spending item.

Taxpayers can’t take that view. We’re writing the checks – not for each individual program, but for all of it at once. We don’t have the option of picking and choosing: we pay for it all.

Want lower taxes?

Well, what would you cut, to pay for your lower taxes?

Bite on that question. Say: I’ll cut this, and this, and that over there. And here come the constituencies for this, and this, and that over there, to explain to you, and the newspaper, and the school board – loudly, and at length – why it’s so important that you, heartless and uncaring as you are, pay the taxes they want you to pay.

Not only that, you should pay even more so we can provide even more, for more people. It’s needed, don’t you understand.

You can’t tell an 80-year-old silver-haired grandma that she damn well should have planned for her prescription drug bills when she was younger.

And that’s exactly the example pro-tax-and-spenders like to use. A drastic, heart-tugging example. An example that doesn’t exactly describe the problem.

Wisconsin provides home heating assistance for people at or below 150% of the federal poverty level. The guy who makes 151% wants to know, why not him?

And the glacier moves another inch. That’s the problem.

Economist Howard Kershner said in his “first law:” “when a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare.”

Thomas Jefferson said: “as government grows, freedom recedes.”

Over time, we’ve come to expect more and more from our government. Politicians, wanting to win and then hold office, have been willing to use the power of government to give us the things we’ve asked them for.

Yet, the most successful people are those who don’t wait for others to do for them.

Maybe this is melodramatic, but I worry about the American habit of self-dependence. We’re slowly and surely depending more and more on all the little things our government does for us, or will do, would do, could do if we asked long and hard enough.

Even when government bureaucracies act like bureaucracies – when they turn out to be slow, infuriating, completely undependable. We still wait for the government to do it.

Or maybe it’s just Darwinism. Some will rot away, living off the taxpayer dime, while others do for themselves, with a much greater chance of success because so many of their neighbors don’t.

Less competition, you understand.

Either way, what’s best for my kids? That they learn to wait for the government to do it? Or that they learn to depend on themselves?

I care about them too much to teach them the first way, or to let them learn it on their own. Don’t give them a fish: teach them to fish.

And that’s why I oppose the referendum.

Tax Frustration

The school board is going to vote. If they vote yes, then we – the taxpayers – will also vote. If we vote yes, our taxes will be higher.

That’s how things should be, isn’t it? They can tax and spend up to here, and then they have to ask if they want any more.

All is therefore right in the world. And yet, I’m frustrated.

Seems to me, they shouldn’t have to ask for any more. I think they agree – they shouldn’t have to ask.

Last night, a group called People Acting in Support of Students (PASS) presented 2,500 signatures to the Baraboo School Board, asking for a referendum on the April 1 ballot. The board will make their decision on Friday.

At least PASS had more to say than “more money!”

The PASS group will come to the table Friday with a five-part proposal it presented to the Board last night. In addition to a tax rate increase of $1.20, the group would like to see the immediate reinstatement of all proposed cuts, which include 10 teaching positions, nine sports, AP classes and the French program; eliminating what they termed "non-direct education expenses" such as the Learning Resources Center; asking the administration to contribute to its health insurance premiums; forming a steering committee to look at alternative benefit plans; and table discussion of any new expenditures.

They ask for more money, yes, but also plan for reductions. So kudos for that, although I still have this question: why are we even talking about this?

Statewide, school spending is growing at about 5% per year. It’s a little slower in Baraboo: about 3.8% a year.

In all, Wisconsin spends nearly $10 billion annually on K-12 schools. We cracked the $10,000 per student mark years ago.

Which brings me to a more basic question: why does it cost so much?

We’ve been over all this before. We’ll go over it all again. In five years (2000 to 2004), per-student spending went from $8,618 to $10,505.

Over the same period, the student-teacher ratio fell from just over 13 students per teacher to just over 12.8.

That’s not the same as class size – class sizes are actually larger. But just for kicks, let’s say it is the same. Rounding up to 13 students, at $10,505 per kid: that’s $136,565 per classroom.

Enough to hire two full time teachers (at 2004 compensation levels), with $7,500 left over.

Let’s imagine an elementary school with kindergarten through 6th grade, three classrooms per grade. The leftover money (after we hire two full-time teachers per grade) adds up to $157,521. Enough for a principal and receptionist, maybe a janitor, too.

And that’s if we double the number of teachers we actually have.

That’s part of why I’m frustrated: just perusing the numbers, I can’t imagine why we aren’t already spending enough. They shouldn’t need to ask us for more.

Why do they think they do? There are plenty of pat answers. Unfunded mandates, for example. The state and feds force our schools to offer classes, programs, things that cost money.

Okay, so what are these mandates? How much do they cost? More to the point: if they weren’t mandated, how many of them would we stop doing?

Would we cut back on special education programs (for example), if we weren’t required to have them? Somehow, I doubt it.

I bet we’d have a lot less testing, though. No Child Left Behind – that would get left behind. Although, for the record, federal money going to our schools grew 12.8% annually between 2000 and 2004.

What else? Health insurance costs rising? No kidding. Just ask any farmer.

Fuel costs? Same deal. We’re paying for that already. It’s biting into all of our pocketbooks – and now, it’s going to bite twice: once for our own, and again to pay the taxes.

And that’s still only part of what frustrates me.

It’s that name: People Acting in Support of Students. See: if you support students, you’re with them. If you’re against them – if you oppose spending more, for whatever reason – you don’t support students. You don’t care.

We have a crisis: now! And have to spend more: now! Or our children will suffer! Don’t you support the children? Don’t you care about them?

Put me on record: indeed, I do. In fact, that’s precisely why I’ll oppose the referendum – if there is one.

And that’ll be another column.

Being a Republican Cheerleader

So, how about that President’s budget?

A reporter asked me that question yesterday. Well, almost. I’m paraphrasing, a little. Since I’m a local GOP chairman, local reporters sometimes call me for comment on political events. Most times, I don’t know much about them.

Like the federal budget.

Don’t worry, I did fine. Did a little quick research, asked a few questions. Managed to get through the interview without sounding like a moron. I think.

This sort of interview tends to leave me conflicted. I’m a card-carrying member of the Republican Party. A local chairman, to boot. As such, it’s my role to back the Party up. Yay, team! Go, us!

So what did I tell the reporter? That there’s a lot to like about the President’s proposal.

For example: over 140 programs and whatnot are being cancelled or cut back, due to inefficiency or duplication of services. We stay committed to the Middle East, and bolster homeland security. Make the tax cuts permanent. More support for health savings accounts.

And the 2007 budget represents a (proposed, estimated) 2.2% increase in spending over 2006. A nice, modest number.

On the other hand, I became a Republican because I’m conservative. I think supporting the Republican Party is the best way to support a conservative agenda.

That makes it hard, when I think I see Republicans being particularly un-conservative.

Thankfully, it could be worse. More on that in a bit.

For example, the conservative in me is asking the question: what took so long? Sure, 2.2% is great (if the budget passes as-is), but that modest increase follows a 9.6% increase – that’s how much the budget grew this year.

Almost ten percent! With a Republican President, and a Republican Congress. Spending is growing faster under President Bush than it did under President Clinton.

That’s a little hard for me to wrap my pom-poms around.

So why do I try? Partly, to keep from being a foil for the President’s opponents. I’d hate to read about some Democrat using something I said as evidence that “even Republicans don’t support him!”

This greatly overestimates my own importance, I’m sure, but I still try not to give them the chance.

More importantly, I do it because I’m getting the big things I want. The fiscal policy – tax cuts! The foreign policy – stay the course!

I can’t have everything, so I settle for the big stuff. I hold back on other criticisms, to avoid weakening my own side’s position. Let DailyKos and his Kossites do that to their side. I won’t do it to mine.

Hypocritical? If you say so. I prefer to call it strategery.

And I can console myself with the thought that, as hard as cheerleading for the Republicans can be, it’s easier than doing it for the Democrats.

Just consider Democrat criticisms of the President’s budget. Congressman Dave Obey called it a “disaster and a joke.” He’s slashing spending! And mortgaging our grandchildren’s futures!

Irresponsibly large deficits, you see. And malicious cuts in spending. That’s the line. They want the opposite – more spending, and smaller deficits.

Hey, I don’t like deficits, either. You know how we can get rid of them?

By spending less. Sorry, guys and girls. You can’t have both. We have a deficit because we spend more than we have.

Oh, but we can tax more! Those tax cuts for the rich – take them back!

But…tax cuts lead to higher revenues. More economic activity, which leads to economic growth, which leads to more tax revenues, even at lower rates.

It happened when Reagan was president. And when Kennedy was president. And it’s happened in the Bush presidency, too.

My preference – lower taxes, leading to a stronger economy – has the unfortunate effect of giving our politicians more money to spend. Politicians, being politicians, find that impossible to resist. Even when they’re Republicans.

That’s a bummer.

But the other side wants higher taxes, which slows the economy, and higher spending, which a slower economy won’t support. And then they’ve got the nerve to complain about deficits.

That’s just dense.

So: if it’s not always easy playing cheerleader for the Republicans (and it isn’t), geez, how do those Democrats do it?

Satisfying Insatiable Schools

The irresistible force, and the immovable object. The ancient dilemma begins again.

On one side, teachers and a parents’ group that wants a referendum, asking for more money for Baraboo schools.

On the other, taxpayers who have simply had enough.

A touch of background: the Baraboo School District is having some budget pain. To cope, the district put several popular programs on the chopping block. I’ll leave it to you to figure out why they chose those particular programs. Bottom line, the district got its wish: people aren’t happy.

Last night, Sen. Luther Olsen and Rep. J.A. Hines – both of them evil, children-hating Republicans – came to hear the grievances at a public meeting.

Here’s what one guy had to say:

Audience member Peter Bildsten told the legislators, "I want to remind you that these 'trying times' were imposed on us by the legislature back in the early '90s," when revenue caps became law. That move was a "power grab" to dictate to local school districts how much they could spend, he said. "You were going to force us to go to referenda."

So, wait a minute…the budget is tight because of the state’s revenue caps?

So…they weren’t tight before the revenue caps?

Somebody remind me – were schools sated with money before the revenue caps became law in 1993?

I wasn’t paying attention to such things at the time, but I do remember my high school economics teacher, expounding at length one day in 1987 on the glory of the teacher’s union and the unfairness of it all that they couldn’t get what was fair without a strike.

An anecdotal and possibly clouded memory, but it doesn’t exactly support the notion that revenue caps are the source of the schools’ financial problems. I think school districts were complaining about money well before the revenue caps went into effect.

And they’re not alone. Every government does it, and probably always has. The state mandates things onto the locals, the feds mandate things onto everybody, costs are rising faster than revenues, demand for services, blah blah blah.

The lesson I take from it all: no matter how much we pay, it won’t be enough.

When’s the last time you heard a government say they’ve got enough money? That for the work they have to do, they don’t need a dime more?

When’s the last time you heard a government office, agency, department, bureaucrat say “we’ve actually got too much. Take some back.”

It may happen, but I’ve never heard it. I bet you haven’t, either.

No, what we hear is how horribly tight the budget is, we’ve cut everywhere we can, no fat left, cutting bone now, crucial services going to be hurt….and on, and on, and on.

Just like last year. Just like the year before. And, likely, just like next year. Oh, sure, if a referendum passes, we’ll get a short reprieve. But the drumbeat will start again. No question about it.

Message: you’re paying a lot, we know, but it’s not enough.

Which leaves a lot of us wondering: why isn’t it enough? And when will it be?

A foolish question, of course. It simply isn’t enough. And it won’t be. Ever. Even if we all signed every penny of our paychecks over. It wouldn’t be enough.

Maybe if it was only the school district berating us with their insatiable need for more, more, more, we could live with it. But it’s not. It’s the city, too. And the county. And the state. It’s Circus World Museum, and the hospital, and the library, and the road crews, the police, the welfare office, the old folks’ home, the unemployed, and the new stormwater utility, which will soon start charging us a fee because rain sometimes falls.

I’m not made of money, you know.

Am I a callous jerk for feeling that way? Nope. I’m just tired of being held hostage by the annual demands for more of my money.

So many demands, and I can’t afford to give my kids karate lessons. I can’t justify the debt I’ll incur to install new windows in my 86-year-old house. I can only take my wife out to dinner, oh, maybe once every couple of months.

All worthwhile expenditures. All easily justified. Except I can’t afford it. I have to set priorities, and those don’t make the cut.

Imagine that.

I’m not an education professional. I’m just a guy, raising a family on a limited budget.

And I have simply had enough.

And the Democrats Cheered!

What were they cheering for?

What, exactly, was so wonderful?

It was one of two moments in President Bush’s State of the Union Address that really stood out. In the first, Bush admonished liberals and Democrats:

“…there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.”

Great line. Wish I’d written it.

President Bush was talking about foreign policy, but he could easily have been talking about domestic policy. He could have been setting the audience up for the next stand-out moment – the moment when he said this:

“Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security…”

At which, the Democrat side of the room gave a cheer.

Oh, but it wasn’t just a cheer. They leaped to their feet. Couldn’t stand up fast enough. Roared out their approval – approval for having done nothing, for having scuttled every attempt to reform this multi-trillion dollar program that is going bankrupt as surely as Cindy Sheehan is disgracing the memory of her son.

And the Democrats call huzzah! Stick it to the younger generations! Yay us!

Question: while Rome was burning, did Nero only fiddle? Or did he cheer and applaud now and then, too, like he was watching fireworks on the Fourth of July? Did he ooh and aah and clap his hands as the flames rose and burned and engulfed his city?

Kinda like the Democrats, cheering the defeat of Social Security reform?

And what, precisely, were they cheering?

Granted, the President mentioned “his proposal.” Democrats will bite on that: they weren’t cheering against reform per se – it was just Chimpy’s moronic attempt to throw the whole program at Enron’s feet. A bone for his corporate masters. That’s why they cheered – because Bush failed to snatch the very food from the mouths of elderly blue-haired grandmothers in order to pad the pockets of his Wall Street friends.

Right? Sure.

Some pundits have opined that Bush was “angry and embarrassed” by the applause, or that whoever put that line in the speech is wishing he (she) hadn’t.

I’m not so sure: I wonder if the speechwriters had considered that maybe, just maybe, the Dems would applaud that line, allowing Bush to go on to say:

“…yet the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away – and with every year we fail to act, the situation gets worse.”

They didn’t cheer at that one. I’m at a loss to explain why.

Because what the hell were they cheering for the first time?

We’ve been over these numbers before:

· Social Security currently owes over $12 trillion more than it’s ever expected to have;

· The program will be in real deficit in only 12 years;

· We have barely over 3 workers supporting each retiree today, and the Boomer generation is about to retire;

· Every year we put reform off costs us $600 million.

Not to mention, today’s workers can expect less than a 2% return on the money they “contribute” to Social Security. And that’s before any benefit cuts and/or tax increases.

Which we’ll need, of course, to keep the program going.

Had a worker spent his lifetime investing in the Dow Jones, and retired that day in recession-laden 2001 when the Dow Jones bottomed out, he would still have realized interest earnings of 7%, compounded annually.

Seven percent is better than two percent. Always has been. Always will be.

That’s the situation, and it’s not getting better. Every moment we wait, reform gets harder to achieve. The problem gets worse.

Solutions are few: raise taxes, cut benefits, invest. Or some combination thereof.

Or start euthanizing the Boomer generation. But…surely they weren’t cheering for that.

No: the Dems were simply cheering the defeat of their nemesis. Their white whale. Their bogeyman – the one that makes those scratching noises under the floorboards late at night.

They were cheering because they “won.” They won, not because their ideas prevailed, but because Bush lost.

Oh, and the fact that the rest of us are losing, too…yes, well, that’s unfortunate. But as long as Bush lost. That’s what’s important.

Seniors and Boomers: your benefits are in jeopardy. My generation, and my children’s: our future is in jeopardy.

Democrats of Congress: hip hip hooray! You won!