We are facing crises in domestic policy that will hit the country big-time in the next decade. Three things in particular must be addressed: the federal budget, social security, and Medicare/Medicaid. We must be the party willing to address these issues head on. We must be the party with the courage to ask citizens to make sacrifices for the sake of our country and our children. In the past, neither party has done so. Mondale's experience, saying he would increase taxes, and G.H.W. Bush's loss after he did the same, are not encouraging for those who think that taxes should be increased. Yet the country will soon begin to feel the effects of the burgeoning deficits. The people will turn to the party that tells the truth about them and convinces the American people that it can both raise taxes and, in effect, reduce the benefits expected yet safeguard the future. If our party doesn't do this, it can expect not simply to lose elections, but to help increase the number of those disaffected from the political system. That can have unexpected, potentically disastrous results.
I have in mind a cold-eyed examination of the costs and benefits of the current system designed to provide us security in our old age. I doubt, in truth, that either party can provide one. Nor do I believe that either party has the courage to propose the policies that we make the sacrifices that we will have to make. The truth is, however, that we will either make some sacrifices now, or our country will make them, compounded, in a generation.
