Nation nervous as 2012 begins

Nation nervous as 2012 begins

Express-News Editorial Board

Updated 06:10 p.m., Friday, December 30, 2011


As Americans usher in the New Year, the campaigns for control of the White House and Congress begin in earnest. Democrats have their standard-bearer — the incumbent, President Barack Obama. This week, Republicans begin the process to select their presidential nominee.

Politicians frequently make the case that "this election" is a pivotal one and one that really matters for the future of the nation. They generally make such pronouncements in fundraising appeals.

Yet even cynics realize that some things about the American body politic have become very unhealthy over the last decade. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll finds 72 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. That sounds bad, until you realize the negative number was 80 percent as recently as July.

Candidates from both parties will, over the next 10 months, make their cases for putting the country back on the right track. They may arrive at different solutions, but real leaders will have serious proposals to deal with the following issues:

The Economy: More than three years after the onset of the financial crisis, the American people and their leaders remain justifiably focused on economic issues. The recession that began in 2008 was by some measures the deepest and most prolonged downturn since the Great Depression.

At the beginning of 2012, economic growth is still sluggish. Unemployment remains unacceptably high.

Debt: The national debt of the United States now exceeds its GDP, an ominous benchmark that puts the United States in the same statistical category as the nations of the European sovereign debt crisis.
The trajectory for debt is inexorably higher, and at a faster rate of growth than the economy — a situation that is unsustainable and threatens the economic security of the American people.

Entitlement Spending: Several bipartisan plans have been proposed to avert a U.S. debt crisis: the Bowles-Simpson Commission appointed by President Obama, the Rivlin-Domenici Commission and, most recently, the plan for Medicare reform submitted by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D- Ore.

The debt crisis cannot be averted without addressing entitlement programs, which account for more than 40 percent of federal spending. While politically difficult, it's time for Washington to act responsibly on overdue Social Security and Medicare reforms.

Tax Reform: The Bowles-Simpson Commission and Rivlin-Domenici Commission also make sound recommendations for reforming the nation's tax system, making it more efficient and more fair. That inevitably requires eliminating a vast swath of special interest deductions and other forms of spending through the tax code.

Restoring a sense of fairness: All of these domestic issues share in common a sense that government and its laws no longer reflect the interests of average Americans and a frustration with politics as usual expressed on both sides of the partisan divide. For the good of the nation, our leaders must restore confidence in the political process and faith in the optimistic vision of the American dream.

Immigration Reform: Illegal immigration into the United States has slowed with the decline in economic opportunity. Yet the economic magnet remains, as does a population of illegal immigrants believed to exceed 11 million.

The focus in recent years has been on increasing enforcement of immigration laws with more manpower, more deportations and more fines against employers. A sensible approach to immigration would also reform those laws to match the economic and demographic needs of an aging United States with the human capital of enterprising and hard-working immigrants.

National Security: Through three years of economic distress, there have been plenty of reminders that the U.S. economy doesn't exist in a vacuum. The financial crisis itself was and remains a global phenomenon.

Global events can have a powerful impact on American prosperity and security: the Arab Spring, a nuclear Iran, turmoil in Iraq, a leadership succession in North Korea, the war in Afghanistan, the ongoing threat from international terrorism.

The United States has global interests and remains a beacon for economic opportunity and individual freedom. Its foreign and security policies must reflect those facts in a world in which the pace of change — driven in part by technology — will increase during 2012.