Generationally-Neutral Fiscal Policies

Our nation is facing a day of reckoning of debt. The costs of programs such as Medicare, Social Security and federal pensions will overwhelm any reasonable projection of future GDP in the next 20 or 30 years. While it is questionable if the Baby Boomers actually contributed enough over time to fund their anticipated golden retirement, even if they have done so this money, held in trust, is gone. President Obama recently convened a bipartisan commission to look at these “third rail” political issues, and though I commend the effort I am skeptical of the outcome.

In order to avert what will surely become a generational divide, we need to add another term to the budgeting lexicon. We talk at times about revenue-neutral policies and legislation. We need to speak of generationally-neutral fiscal policies as well. The current post-boomer generation is going to be saddled with trillions of dollars of national debt, and a legacy of unfunded, underfunded and looted mandates. They will refuse, as well they should, to support this burden, and they will have the growing political power to do so. Politicians are demonstrably unable to address this growing problem and be re-elected, and so a non-elected, broadly representative body of multi-partisan financial policy experts needs to vet legislation for generational neutrality. If the cost of a program, other than monies needed for national defense, exceeds the projected revenue of the generation benefiting from and implementing it, then that legislation goes back to Congress. I am ashamed of the fiscal situation that my children are inheriting from my generation and the one just before me, and we need to make the hard choices now to remedy this. If not, we will be passing down “the sins of the fathers unto their children to the third and forth generation. . .” This is not the legacy I want to leave for my children.