E-Newsletter No. 20
August 2015
If not us, who?_____If not now, when?

As we have discussed in the last few newsletters, our Editorial Board has shared a number of recommendations on how our country can move forward to Fix the Debt. In this newsletter, we would like to direct you to our Join the Conversation page on our Foundation’s website. We have added a new conversation piece entitled The 2020 Initiative which discusses six highly inter-related issues that must be addressed in order for our country to resolve the growing debt problem. The six issues are Fiscal Responsibility, Term Limits, Tax Reform, Welfare Reform, Social Security Reform, and Medicare/healthcare Reform.

Over the past several months, our Editorial Board members have shared these recommendations with a number of our country’s elected officials and with many of the candidates who are running for president. We have emphasized that in order to successfully begin re-paying the country’s outstanding debt, each of these six inter-related proposals would need to be implemented. Implementing only three of the six, or even five of the six, will not serve to accomplish the goal of paying off the country’s debt.

The first order of business is to have our country’s elected leaders acknowledge that pushing the country’s growing debt problem onto future generations is immoral. It will take true leadership (along with political compromise and bipartisan cooperation) to achieve fiscal responsibility and start repaying the country’s outstanding debt over the course of the next few generations. Our Editorial Board agrees with the following assertions by the Campaign to Fix the Debt –

The solution(s) to the country’s debt problem will need to include both spending reductions and increases in tax revenues.

Everyone in the country will need to make sacrifices and “give up something”.

The country is in a deep $18.3 trillion hole. Therefore, the first step needs to be “stop the bleeding” and reduce the annual deficit amount to zero. Even this first step will be extremely difficult to achieve. It will entail a significant transformation of our country – – away from the Entitlement State and away from “business as usual” in our nation’s capitol. We must begin to implement reforms to the country’s entitlement programs. Many of our recommendations represent a fairly radical change to the existing programs. But we can no longer delay. The country’s debt problem will not magically disappear overnight – – we must begin to act now.

It should be noted that no one (including the diverse members of our Editorial Board) will be in complete agreement with all aspects of these six recommendations. As we noted above, everyone is going to have to give up something if we are ever going to be able to move forward on the country’s debt issue. Everyone will naturally want someone else to pay to fix the problem. We are putting forward The 2020 Initiative as a set of inter-related changes that should be implemented, so that the country can return to a Self-Reliant Society, where We The People again promote personal responsibility, rather than rely on another government program.

US Debt Clock – – July 1st – $56,943 per citizen / August 1st – $57,032