There's no shortage of evidence that humans procrastinate when faced with unpleasant experiences. Most of us know this personally. We've put in all-nighters in college or done our taxes on April 15 -- or this year, April 18. Procrastination is a common enough failing, but it's the one thing we really can't afford when it comes to the federal budget debate. This is a problem that gets more fearsome and tougher to solve the longer we put it off.
Yet procrastination is what we're getting. Or worse, procrastination posing as bold action. President Obama's budget request offered both spending cuts and tax increases to reduce our deficits by about $1 trillion, but offered little on the long-term problems of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The House Republicans are celebrating their vote in favor of cutting $60 billion in federal spending this year, but given that (a) the deficit is expected to be $1.6 trillion and (b) there's little chance the Senate and President Obama will go along, it may not amount to much.
Meanwhile, the risks of inaction just get higher. Consider this:
The bond market could de-friend us. For lo these many years, the United States has been able to spend more than it takes in because investors worldwide have been happy to keep lending to us by buying our Treasury bon! ds. Give n the economic mess in Europe and how dicey things can be in the developing world, the U.S. government is still seen as a good place to park your money. But how long will that last if we can't get our act together on the budget? The scariest part is that bond crises have a nasty habit of popping up out of the blue--like the iceberg materializing in front of the Titanic. In the terse words of David Brooks, "The bond markets are with you until the second they are against you. When the psychology shifts... the shock will be grievous: national humiliation, diminished power in the world, drastic cuts and spreading pain."
We are being warned. Sheila Bair heads the FDIC which closes banks when they're about to go under, so she knows a thing or two about what happens when investors lose confidence. Bair is well-respected, and she's worried: "Financial markets are already sending disquieting signals," she recently wrote. She's not the only one. The big bond rating company Moody's has also made rumblings that our triple-A bond rating isn't immutable.
We could shell out nearly 5 trillion in interest in the next 10 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the country will spend about $4.8 trillion on interest payments between now and 2020. And since the CBO is required to make its projections based on current law, these figures assume that the Bush tax cuts, all of them, will expire at the end of the two-year extension period. Almost no one thinks that will actually happen.
In a decade, Medicare costs will top $1 trillion a year. All the budget wonks say health care is the undertow that could drown the budget -- and the U.S. economy along with it. In 2010, the country spent $528 billion on Medicare and $280 billion on Medicaid. Together, that's more than we spent on defense. But with rising health care costs and an aging population, those numbers are set to zoom skyward. By 2020, they will almost double to $1 trillion for Medicare and $458 billion for Medicaid. These numbers are truly fearsome, ! and no m atter what you think of the Obama health plan, at least it included some cuts and cost containment provisions for Medicare. Repeal it without replacing those, and the costs for Medicare will be even higher.
2011 is the time to start. It's encouraging that there are specific proposals on the table and that the
politicaldebate has finally begun. But with elections coming up in 2012--and with straw polls already dominating the news -- we don't have much time before the country goes into its quadrennial "all campaigning all the time" mode. Big national elections are generally not the best times for honest discussions about the budget, and besides everyone is distracted--candidates, journalists, and voters as well. But we still have a few months. We can't solve the budget problem in that short a time, but if we don't start, we could lose another two years while the risks continue to mount.
Cutting federal spending or raising taxes won't be pleasant. Local governments will not get money they're used to getting, and companies and non-profits nationwide will lose government contracts and grants that have, in some cases, been keeping them afloat. There will be layoffs of government workers. The chorus of disapproval greeting President Obama and the Republicans now that they've started to get specific on spending cuts shows just how painful and controversial this will be. As for raising taxes, even the smallest uptick is bound to get millions of Americans upset.
But there's simply no way to do this without cutting spending and raising taxes. If we start now, at least we get to decide what to do when. If we wait until the country is up against a bond market crisis or other financial emergency, we'll have to slash in every direction and raise taxes in one fell swoop. Surely we're a sensible enough nation to avoid that.
So now you can take your pick of advice from two great sources: There's Lewis Carroll who wro! te "'The time has come' the Walrus said, 'to talk of many things.'" That's true enough here. Or if you're a boomer, maybe you'd rather go with "The time to hesitate is through" from Jim Morrison and the Doors. Either way, the message is the same. This time, this year, we simply have to reduce the red ink.
There have been numerous reports especially in the new media about the extravagance of top civil servants and ministers and MPs and MBs. Even their family members have been accused of leading jet-setting lifestyles, having a range of expensive cars in their garage, over-whelming jewellery, and courting the world of the rich and famous here and abroad as well, having lands and businesses that would have taken an entrepreneur a light year to build, etc. In some instances even the dwellings of certain individuals were deemed fit for kings.
Top civil servants upon retiring were also said to take off with very attractive appointments as Board members and Executive Directors of leading private sector organizations. This also means that on top of receiving their pensions, they also get paid handsomely, sitting on these Boards.
Perhaps, in view of the impending general elections the Honourable Prime
Ministershould make it mandatory for all top civil servants and ministers as well as even those from the opposition MPs to publicly declare their assets.
In addition, since the government is using tax payers money to meet out monthly pensions for retiring civil servants, does it also not make sense that they should forgo their pensions if they choose to take up appointments in the private sector?
Further, the Prime Minister would take the government of the day to greater glory if he could also institute impartial investigations into the many accounts of accumulated wealth by individuals while they were in public office. He must scoop even those who were in office well ahead of his time as Prime Minister and have since fad! ed from the public opinion radar.
There is nothing wrong if individuals accumulate wealth. But the issue seems that there is a general feeling that such opulence would have been well beyond the monthly pay packet of those in public service.
If the Prime Minister can carry out a thorough public accountability exercise without fear or favour, he would have done justice to the nation, the citizens, government and of course to the UMNO political party of which he is a senior member.
The fight against corruption is slowly being realized as one to secure life equity and socio-economic mobility of the masses.
Recent unearthing of dozens of scam cases only highlights the prevalence of poor governance that has enabled this venom to manifest in diverse forms and spread to endemic proportions.
The modus operandi for open loot among the top and lower-end power wielding functionaries endorses the urgent need for a grand battle to ferret out corruption and in this there is the prerequisite is to identify opportunities that have encouraged and favored corrupt practices in the very first place.
This is not to say that the occasional traffic challan for breaking a red light or allowing slight flouting of building rules during construction of infrastructure will be wiped out for good. There has and never will be a real state of Utopia.
But even then tackling corruption remains pertinent for the simple fact that any corrupt society or country has all the accompanying problems (discussed thread bare on innumerable occasions) that should threaten its prosperity and survival.
Of late there have been enough pressures on incumbent political combines to display more honest commitments. In return the Indian electorate has also been rewarding clean governments with an aggressive development agenda at the state levels --- Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik, Sheila Dikshit and even Narender Modi have won a repeated mandates to govern their provinces for displaying enough resolve and impleme! ntation on this front.
If this should not encourage similar efforts at the center then nothing ever will.
Lately public focus has been concentrating on exhortations by the Supreme Court asking the center to go after billions of Indian money stashed away in foreign banks.
As always it has been the head of the ruling polity (presently it is Dr. Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi) who have become a punching bag for failing to uproot the evil that has been tacitly nurtured over a long time by an entire system and the whole country.
The argument is not to absolve the political-bureaucratic-judicial machinery from being participants in the big game of loot.
But, the great war against corruption cannot be left to become a one mans burden!
In the absence of foolproof laws and the sheer tediousness of enforcement processes it is only a normal reaction to put the onus of proper implementation of good governance on to a few political heads.
Would it not be more worthwhile that political pressure on governments could be maintained to effectuate facilitation of processes for rectification, formulation of institutional commitments like financial and law enforcement incentives, overcoming India specific barriers, laying down spdistinctive legal standards, etc.
Systemic checks have to be there in place and this sort of a conceptualization is apparent even in Ram Rajya where the Rajya represented people's power and was stronger than even Rama. Texts delineate instances where Rama himself called himself as the upholder or facilitator of the highest moral standards of ethics, morality and good governance.
When individuals will remain prone to discretionary interpretations and tendencies an absolute power cannot be vested in their hands.
By attributing superhuman cleansing virtues in ending all evils to political leaders who have emerged on the basis of consensus of those very people, tainted by cases of graft, would be nothing but fallacy or running further away fro! m the tr uth.
The great challenge to bell this cat of corruption will have to be collaborative and in the form of well framed and sustainable institutions of technology and operation.
Most developed countries in the West have fared better than others by implementing better and loophole-free institutions.
Moreover, as Indias literacy level improves and the population becomes aware of its rights, for example of the Right To Information, it should not be difficult for more comprehensive and simplified frameworks in being acceptable.
A good example is Switzerland that has relied on banking as among its high revenue earners and yet has successfully applied progressive banking regulation reforms in their domestic systems to prevent and discourage its corrupt from misusing the private banking facilities.
Also international support in Indias efforts for economic recovery could be solicited in fighting the menace.
Institutionalizing economic recoveries would prevent the money from being channelized into wrongful activities and hence should serve as a motivation to developed and richer countries.
Enabling by sharing knowledge and providing validation to efforts of developing and underdeveloped world, some of which have become repositories of terror elements, will lead to peace and strengthening of bonds.
The desire to maintain status quo must not dampen the enthusiasm to initiate the journey.
Media highlights and political clamor have never been absent and served their purpose.
But for some degree of real change the answers lie in concrete institutional response
No less than eleven Ontario Government Ministries are occupying offices at Saktos Preston Square site in downtown Ottawa. These include the Ministry of the Atto! rney Gen eral, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, the Ministry of Health Promotion, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the Ministry of Transportation. Another Sakto building at 2745 Iris Street is occupied by federal government of Canada offices.
Following the ROS decision, Masing wrote to Taib asking that Sng be removed as assistant minister and replace with PRSs own man.
He described Sng as stale and tasteless food. Dont force us to eat food that we do not like, otherwise we will fall sick and nobody will look after us.
