Take responsibility now for excesses

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts." - Abraham Lincoln

Here are some real facts: We are a nation with an ever-growing federal debt of more than $12 trillion. We face annual deficits exceeding $1 trillion, and we have unfunded entitlement obligations totaling $53 trillion to be paid by our children. That comes to $184,000 for every American. It won't go away by taxing the rich, cutting welfare, or ending two wars. We can't grow our way out of this fiscal house of horrors, nor can we fix it by simply eliminating earmarks or foreign aid. While all spending and revenue options should be kept on the table, what is necessary at a minimum is structural reform of financing and promised benefits under Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare entitlement programs. Even as the nation works to fix our current crisis, we must not let fiscal discipline be pushed to the back burner. The long-term challenges we face will not go away while the focus is on the short-term. It is critical that we address both.

For decades, we share blame with our leaders as we've welcomed lower taxes and greater spending while allowing our eyes to glaze over with indifference whenever a voice dares to say there will be a day of reckoning for our excesses. But the day of reckoning is upon us. We can make generational responsibility our national ethos again by making the hard choices now and planning shared sacrifice in this generation so that our children can enjoy the blessings of freedom and opportunity in their generation.

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." - Abraham Lincoln

John Szalinski

Mundelein