At no time in my life, with the exception of perhaps during WWII when I was child, have I felt so much anxiety about the future of our nation. I believe we made a fundamental mistake in the seventies when we chose to ignore the threat posed by our dependence on foreign oil and continued our energy wasting ways. Today given all of the disruptions in northern Africa and the Middle East, we find ourselves extremely vulnerable to oil price increases particularly given the deterioration of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. The monarchy has the power to double world oil prices in a short time if they become displeased with our support of democracy for their country or for Bahrain. I am sure that that is a reality that our policy makers are aware of and it will influence decisions we make about the turmoil in that part of the world, decisions that might necessarily compromise some of our fundamental national values.
More serious, in my mind, is the growing national debt that we are accumulating and, unlike past years, foreign governments, including China, hold nearly 50% of that debt. Will we three to five years from now be wringing our hands about either a market response to our growing indebtedness that may be devastating to our economy or to a power play by one or more of our debt holders.
It is past time for our government to address this issue, but instead we have what I characterize as a political kabuki dance taking place in Washington where we ignore the difficult existential problem and argue about minutia.
We have the recommendations of two serious panels, the president's Debt Commission and the Rivlin/Domenici Bipartisan Policy Center that have presented clearly the issues and the alternatives. In a functioning political system these reports could form the basis for a serious discussion leading to policies that might begin to strengthen our nation. However in our dysfunctional system, where everyone is always campaigning, there is no time to govern effectively and the nation continues on its path to fiscal chaos.
I believe history will judge my generation very unfavorably when compared to the Greatest Generation and I fear that we are leaving a world for my grandchildren that is one in which the United States is unable to effectively compete as other nations grow and develop.
That doesn't have to be our future, but we are fast running out of time and resources to avoid what now seems almost inevitable.
