Commentary: This is not your father's country anymore

By Jack Cafferty

NEW YORK (CNN) -- I think this time, it's different. I have this uneasy feeling our country is in the process of changing forever, and not necessarily for the better -- unless our perspective changes with it.

I have kicked around longer than most people: I'm 66 years old. I remember well the '50s and early '60s, which were times of unbridled enthusiasm, prosperity and opportunity.

The American dream was a job, a house, a car. A modest, affordable house and a car that was most likely a Chevrolet, Ford or Plymouth.

People weren't in debt buying things they couldn't afford, and neither was the government. There were recessions along the way -- relatively mild downturns of short duration -- but nothing like this feels like it's going to be.

The interest on the national debt will approach $500 billion a year this year or next. Our country is sinking into the quicksand of insolvency as surely as the victims of subprime mortgages who have lost their jobs and their houses and watched their savings evaporate in the stock market decline.

The current national debt is soaring past $12 trillion. The costs of the stimulus packages and bailouts (and stimulus package is just another word for bailout) are being tacked on and passed on because they are being paid for with money we don't have.

We are staring at unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security in the tens of trillions of dollars. Where's that money going to come from? We have to either raise taxes or cut benefits. There are no other options.

The baby boomers are starting to retire and will consume an ever larger share of these entitlement programs. They will also age in sufficient numbers to drive the political agenda for the foreseeable future. Think they're going to want less Social Security and less Medicare? Think again.

The generation coming along behind them that will be asked to pay for all this can't. There are not enough good jobs left in this country to pay those kinds of bills.

At the end of the day, we are going to have to settle for less. Less money, smaller houses, smaller cars and smaller dreams.

This is not your father's country anymore. And we had better all start getting used to it.

On the bright side, our history shows that times of shared national sacrifice have resulted in our greatest national achievements. It's been a very long time since we have been called upon to make any kind of serious sacrifice. We were overdue until one day in September, when Lehman Brothers collapsed. We're not overdue anymore.

tl;dr

Saw it on CNN.com. Cafferty's a hack, as are most of the editorial writers there. So who gives a shit?

I'm pretty sure Jack Cafferty's father's America would have been one where No Irish Need Apply.

tl;dr

Sits back and waits for the flamming to start

People weren't in debt buying things they couldn't afford, and neither was the government. There were recessions along the way -- relatively mild downturns of short duration -- but nothing like this feels like it's going to be.

That is why Republicans put forward plans to create jobs by lowering income tax rates for working families, cutting taxes for small businesses,

Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need?

In Louisiana, we took a different approach. Since I became governor, we cut more than 250 earmarks from our state budget. And to create jobs for our citizens, we cut taxes six times -- including the largest income tax cut in the history of our state.

Louisiana lawmakers grappling with an expected $1.2 billion drop in state tax income next year could get a partial bailout from Washington, but state senators were told Thursday that the federal money won't fill all the gaps.

In 2006, the highest-income 20 percent of Louisiana residents (those with income above $90,000) paid 7.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the bottom 20 percent paid 12.1 percent — an effective tax rate one and a half times as large.

And the WoW forums claim another poor soul unable or unwilling to read anything longer than a sentence or factoid

Roor and whatnot.

I'm a little confused. Are some of you under the impression that Cafferty is a conservative?

We as Americans have started to have the mindset that we deserve a huge house, we deserve health care, we deserve a new car or three and that nobody can fail. I personally don’t know why we have that mentality but it’s just plain stuipid. The only right you have as an American is to TRY to succeed. To succeed you have to work your ass off and to TRY to make your family’s life better, and maybe, just maybe you will get a house, a car, have some health care and beable to retier at 65.

Last, the bailouts need to stop. At what point does GM just magically become a better company, that can sell cars again? I don't see it happening. So do we continue to put $25 billion every quarter into a company that really doesn't have a very good business model? I worked in newspapers for 12 years, finally got out. The business model is bad, newspapers are not going to survive as they are, and when you get right down to it, they just need to feel the pain of the times, restructure, become smaller and more efficient, and come out of it as better businesses. Where's the end? Does anyone really think TARP 2 is going to be the end, that spending 2 trillion dollars this time will fix the banks? I don't.

Last night, in a sickening display of smoke & mirrors, Obama tried to make the case that the deficits that he's running up are for the children.

Last night, in a sickening display of smoke & mirrors, Obama tried to make the case that the deficits that he's running up are for the children. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Further, look at who votes and, more importantly who is running the country: Boomers. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, etc are all boomers.

Definition of the boom years
The exact beginning and end of the baby boom can be debated. In the United States, demographers usually use 1946 to 1964, although the U.S. birthrate began to shoot up in 1941 and to decline after 1957. By 1948 the US population increase was back to the pre-Depression increase rate of about 1.5% per year.

I just wanted to quote this again for lolz.

Lolz!

Please do explain how the current deficit-spending is good for the children... I'm all eyes.

Obama isn't a boomer by most definitions either. Yes, some few (including the U.S. Census Bureau) view the boomer generation as lasting until 1964, but as I said, most experts put the cutoff at 1960.

You still haven't explained whether you genuinely believe Obama is deliberately fucking over future generations and hiding it.

He failed to talk about the fact that she will be paying to service the debt he's issuing for the rest of her life, or the fact that while she is paying to service that debt she will also be trying to support the generation that racked it up while they retire comfortably because of their political clout.

He is most definitely fucking over future generations, and he is certainly not coming clean about it.

Tyral, I'm not sure how anyone could twist what I've said to mean that he's setting out to destroy the future. I said exactly what I meant: he is reframing it to look good for the future when in fact it is not but is only good for his next election.

Well, honestly that's another discussion about politicians entirely, Tyral.

If it somehow makes you feel better to think of Obama as not a boomer and part of your generation, feel free.

If you define 'evil' as 'typical politician who cannot look beyond his/her next election' then yeah, he is just that 'evil'. That stimulus package, even if it works, starts being nonstimulative and recessionary about 10 years out according to CBO. So does he know that it hurts long term? You bet he does.

The implication made here is that Obama knows that what he is doing is bad for future generations, and that he's lying or hiding the truth about it. No effort is made to look at it from the other point of view, that perhaps Obama doesn't agree that raising the deficit now will negatively impact our children or their future. Or even that Obama knows more about the situation than most of us do, and that he's making what he feels is the best decision to address matters.

that perhaps Obama doesn't agree that raising the deficit now will negatively impact our children or their future

Eventually, the foreign investors lending the federal government billions of dollars every week — to make up for the current gap between taxes and spending — will need a reason to believe that those loans will be repaid. Otherwise, they will begin demanding much higher interest rates. That could create a new financial crisis.

“Something that’s unsustainable, like a dysfunctional relationship, can go on longer than you expect,” Mr. Orszag has said, “and then end faster and messier than you think.”

Or even that Obama knows more about the situation than most of us do, and that he's making what he feels is the best decision to address matters.

I realize it's difficult to NOT be cynical, especially during times like this, but can you at all make an attempt to give people the benefit of the doubt? Why do you assume that someone who disagrees with you has corrupt motives?

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama knows Americans are unhappy that the government could rescue people who bought mansions beyond their means.

But his assurance Tuesday night that only the deserving will get help rang hollow.

Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who used lousy judgment.

The president skipped over several complex economic circumstances in his speech to Congress - and may have started an international debate among trivia lovers and auto buffs over what country invented the car.

A look at some of his assertions:

OBAMA: "We have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values."

THE FACTS: If the administration has come up with a way to ensure money only goes to those who got in honest trouble, it hasn't said so.

Defending the program Tuesday at a Senate hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it's important to save those who made bad calls, for the greater good. He likened it to calling the fire department to put out a blaze caused by someone smoking in bed.

"I think the smart way to deal with a situation like that is to put out the fire, save him from his own consequences of his own action but then, going forward, enact penalties and set tougher rules about smoking in bed."

Similarly, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. suggested this month it's not likely aid will be denied to all homeowners who overstated their income or assets to get a mortgage they couldn't afford.

"I think it's just simply impractical to try to do a forensic analysis of each and every one of these delinquent loans," Sheila Bair told National Public Radio.

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OBAMA: "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

THE FACTS: Depends what your definition of automobiles, is. According to the Library of Congress, the inventor of the first true automobile was probably Germany's Karl Benz, who created the first auto powered by an internal combustion gasoline engine, in 1885 or 1886. In the U.S., Charles Duryea tested what library researchers called the first successful gas-powered car in 1893. Nobody disputes that Henry Ford created the first assembly line that made cars affordable.

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OBAMA: "We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before."

THE FACTS: Oil imports peaked in 2005 at just over 5 billion barrels, and have been declining slightly since. The figure in 2007 was 4.9 billion barrels, or about 58 percent of total consumption. The nation is on pace this year to import 4.7 billion barrels, and government projections are for imports to hold steady or decrease a bit over the next two decades.

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OBAMA: "We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade."

THE FACTS: Although 10-year projections are common in government, they don't mean much. And at times, they are a way for a president to pass on the most painful steps to his successor, by putting off big tax increases or spending cuts until someone else is in the White House.

Obama only has a real say on spending during the four years of his term. He may not be president after that and he certainly won't be 10 years from now.

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OBAMA: "Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."

THE FACTS: This may be so, but it isn't only Republicans who pushed for deregulation of the financial industries. The Clinton administration championed an easing of banking regulations, including legislation that ended the barrier between regular banks and Wall Street banks. That led to a deregulation that kept regular banks under tight federal regulation but extended lax regulation of Wall Street banks. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, later an economic adviser to candidate Obama, was in the forefront in pushing for this deregulation.

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OBAMA: "In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them. We'll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use. We will root out the waste, fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn't make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas."

THE FACTS: First, his budget does not accomplish any of that. It only proposes those steps. That's all a president can do, because control over spending rests with Congress. Obama's proposals here are a wish list and some items, including corporate tax increases and cuts in agricultural aid, will be a tough sale in Congress.

Second, waste, fraud and abuse are routinely targeted by presidents who later find that the savings realized seldom amount to significant sums. Programs that a president might consider wasteful have staunch defenders in Congress who have fought off similar efforts in the past.

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OBAMA: "Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."

THE FACTS: While the president's stimulus package includes billions in aid for renewable energy and conservation, his goal is unlikely to be achieved through the recovery plan alone.

In 2007, the U.S. produced 8.4 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, including hydroelectric dams, solar panels and windmills. Under the status quo, the Energy Department says, it will take more than two decades to boost that figure to 12.5 percent.

If Obama is to achieve his much more ambitious goal, Congress would need to mandate it. That is the thrust of an energy bill that is expected to be introduced in coming weeks.

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OBAMA: "Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs."

THE FACTS: This is a recurrent Obama formulation. But job creation projections are uncertain even in stable times, and some of the economists relied on by Obama in making his forecast acknowledge a great deal of uncertainty in their numbers.

The president's own economists, in a report prepared last month, stated, "It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error."

Beyond that, it's unlikely the nation will ever know how many jobs are saved as a result of the stimulus. While it's clear when jobs are abolished, there's no economic gauge that tracks job preservation. The estimates are based on economic assumptions of how many jobs would be lost without the stimulus.

If it somehow makes you feel better to think of Obama as not a boomer and part of your generation, feel free.

Yeah, I can understand that...what I object to are the attempts at always homogenizing everyone that belongs to a "generation" into one big monolithic entity that thinks, feels and behaves the same. It's silly.

Ok, it never happens, you got me.

I'm pretty sure the "always" was a blatant exaggeration for effect.