DEFICITS AND WAR

One more reason to be worried about the U.S.’s increasingly perilous fiscal future is that it could well jeopardize the war on terror – which will need real resources for the foreseeable future. I like Bush’s new spending on defense and homeland security (which is not to say that all of it wisely used). But that’s precisely why I think we need to cut back elsewhere. My agenda: means-test social security, scale back Medicare, abolish agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare and move toward a flat tax that the super-rich cannot evade. That’s one good answer to the Dems’ itching to raise taxes again. We can do it all – if only we stop wasting so much on people and special interests (of left and right) who do not need the help. Fareed Zakaria gets the idea. The one thing you learn from history is that inattention to national finances is the surest sign of decay in global power. No one can be for long-term deficits and the war on terror. They negate each other. When people tell me to forget the debt because the war on terror trumps everything else, they are missing the fact that the deficit will kill this war sooner than any Baathist insurgent. The struggle abroad desperately requires reform and sacrifice at home. I just hope this president (and future ones) understand this. I fear he doesn’t.