Gregg Easterbrook

The super committee has predictably failed – maybe there was green kryptonite hidden in its meeting room. Months of nearly round-the-clock debate about reigning in the national debt, conducted at the highest levels of government, come to a close with nothing done about the problem. This is the essence of contemporary Washington: lots of empty talk, interest groups appeased, all difficult decisions indefinitely tabled and the national interest ignored.

What comes next? Most likely, Congress will make the national debt even worse.

Republicans want to extend the George W. Bush top-rate tax cuts. Democrats want to extend the Barack Obama payroll tax cut, and enact yet another bonus extension of unemployment benefits. One or all may happen by Christmas as both parties switch to full-blown pandering mode.

If the costs in the December 2010 stimulus bill are any guide, a package of extended tax cuts for the well-off, payroll tax cuts for everyone and bonus payments to the unemployed will add around $700 billion to the national debt.

Bear in mind, last December’s stimulus bill (the third, following a 2008 stimulus under Bush and a 2009 stimulus under Obama) entailed $860 billion in borrowing. If another $700 billion or so is borrowed for lead items on the parties’ wish lists, during the very 12 months that Washington has refused to take action to reduce the national debt by $1.2 trillion over many years, an extra $1.5 trillion will be added to the debt in the here and now.

If tax-cut and unemployment-benefit extensions pass, Congress will already have spent every penny of the $1.2 trillion the deficit commission was supposed to save. Though no money has actually been saved yet – the “mandatory” spending reductions triggered by super committee inaction don’t start until 2013, which leaves plenty of time for Congress to cancel them.

As Oprah viewers know, when people finally toss out the clutter from their closets, often the next step is a wild shopping spree. In the case of Congress, the shopping spree looms without the first step of throwing stuff away.

But don’t we need income tax cuts to spur the economy? The entire Great Recession has happened with federal taxes at post-war lows. Bush’s income tax reductions were enacted in 2001 and 2003, and then extended in 2010. If income tax cuts haven’t fixed the economy in many years of use, it’s extremely unlikely that they will magically acquire the power to do so in 2012.

Don’t we need an extended payroll tax cuts to spur demand? A year of payroll tax  holiday has led to only a modest increase in the GDP.

Doesn’t high unemployment mean benefits must be extended? The jobless rate is the number one issue in the economy. But as Lawrence Summers argued before his stint in the Obama White House, unemployment benefits can make the jobless rate worse by encouraging people to pass on entry-level employment. Unemployment benefits are hardly lavish. So if they pay about the same for doing nothing as an entry-level wage, why bother to work?

Through unemployment premiums deducted from their paychecks, most Americans funded about half a year of coverage. Now, most who lost jobs have received two years of coverage, courtesy of the national debt, and the president proposes a third year of coverage, also funded by borrowing. Rather than pay people for doing nothing, any benefits extension should require community-service hours.

Beyond looming demands for more tax cuts and benefits, Medicare payments to physicians are scheduled to decline by 27 percent in January. The financing of Obama’s health care package is predicated on enormous Medicare savings down the road, so a Medicare payment cut in January sounds like good news. But there’s already a move afoot to cancel the cut.

For nine consecutive years, Congress has cancelled scheduled Medicare payment cuts to physicians, who constitute one of the country’s best-funded lobbies. Mere weeks after the 2010 enactment of his health care plan, which promised unspecified big spending cuts, President Obama asked Congress to cancel the only scheduled Medicare spending cut, saying  “we cannot allow this to happen.”

It’s true that the Medicare physician fee structure needs fundamental reform. For about two decades, Medicare has paid hospitals per-patient flat fees called DRGs, rather than paying per procedure, as with doctors. Peter Orszag, Obama’s first budget director, notes this approach has contained taxpayer costs at hospitals. Something similar might work for physicians.

But when Washington forecasts dramatic health care cost cuts in the future, while repeatedly cancelling health care cost cuts in the present, this makes concern about the national debt seem like a big joke. That, in turn, emboldens interest groups to reach into the cookie jar.

Some commentators contend that more borrow-and-spend will repair the economy. Perhaps. Your columnist believes reckless borrowing has become a core reason the economy and job creation remain cool.

Political leaders of both parties seem determined to push the nation off a fiscal cliff. That leads to pessimism about the country’s future, which discourages investment and job creation. Why hire if the country’s leaders are acting irresponsibly?

With the failure of the super committee, Americans ought to feel dismayed by yet another  indication that leaders of both parties are more concerned about their own temperature than that of the nation’s.

Photo: Mineral curator Mike Romsey holds a newly classified mineral, to be named Jadarite, at the Natural History Museum in central London April 25, 2007. A mineral found by geologists in Serbia shares virtually the same chemical composition as the fictional kryptonite from outer space, used by the superhero’s nemesis Lex Luthor to weaken him in the film “Superman Returns”. REUTERS/Toby Melville

Action by the debt-reduction ‘super committee’ is due in less than a week. You will not be surprised to learn the super committee may only announce grandiose goals, while “deferring” specifics to some unspecified future point.

If, after months of hype, the super committee turns out to be a Potemkin committee, taking no action against the tide of government red ink, here is what will happen: Absolutely nothing.

That’s why falling dangerously arrears on national fiscal policy is so seductive – in the short term, nothing happens. Greece, Italy, Portugal – their governments made irresponsible decision after irresponsible decision, and nothing happened. So the irresponsible decisions continued.

America’s political leadership can continue to act irresponsibly about money for years to come, and absolutely nothing will happen … until it’s too late.

Consider an analogy to household finances. My wife and I are squares about money. We borrow conservatively, repay early, plan cautious budgets and won’t buy anything unless we know we can cover the cost within a short time. The result is a nice house that’s mostly our own equity, plus retirement savings and a strong credit rating. In fiscal terms, we are pretty much where the United States was a quarter century ago.

Suppose I ran out and bought a high-end sports car for me and a diamond brooch for her. This would be irresponsible, especially from the standpoint of our three children. What would happen the next day?

Absolutely nothing. I could break years of rigorous self-discipline about debt and short-term outlook, but pay no penalty at all.

Observing that nothing happened, suppose I then take my wife on a luxury world tour – first-class flights, presidential suites, Bollinger ’75. I could just sign for it, no questions would be asked. What would happen? Absolutely nothing.

I could go on like this for quite a while, overspending without restraint. The sun would continue to rise. It would seem nothing was going wrong — until my family’s finances were ruined. By the time that point had been reached, it would be too late.

In most of its history, the United States government has been conservative about debt. The nation had to borrow significantly during the early 1940s, but responded with a strict focus on repaying that debt quickly during the late 1940s and early 1950s. As recently as the Reagan deficit years of the early 1980s, there was bipartisan consensus that significant borrowing should be a temporary policy only. In the late 1990s and first two years of the 2000s, the national debt declined as the budget went into surplus and Congress resisted the impulse to overspend.

Then, beginning in fiscal 2003, discipline went out the window. The FY 2003 deficit of $378 billion was considered shocking at the time — the worst, in current dollars, since World War II. Every year since then, save fiscal 2007, has seen a federal deficit that would have been shocking in any previous decade. Yet nothing happened! The sun still rises, and other nations still lend the United States money.

When Congress and the White House discovered they could borrow recklessly and nothing bad seemed to happen, forbidden fruit had been tasted. Since then, neither Republicans nor Democrats in Washington have shown restraint. Republicans want lower taxes and more corporate welfare, Democrats want more spending for their party’s interest groups. Both sides keep ordering cases of champagne – and nothing happens … in the short-term, that is.

Currently the plan is for trillion-plus annual deficits as far as the eye can see. Even if the super committee achieves its mandate of reducing the deficit by $120 billion a year – a “draconian” reduction equivalent to 3 percent of annual federal spending — the national debt still would be projected to bloat from $14 trillion today to $19.6 trillion in a decade.

But the White House and Congressional leaders of both parties know that if the super committee fails, nothing will happen right away. Supposedly automatic budget cuts would be triggered. But they would not take effect until 2013, ensuring that for now, no program is cut and no tax is increased. Waiter, more Bollinger!

Then, in 2013, waivers for the “automatic” cuts could begin. Timothy Noah noted recently in the New Republic that the Gramm-Rudman balanced-budget act, passed to considerable theatrics in 1985, on paper imposed automatic cuts if Congress overspent or under-taxed. The rules proved toothless when lawmakers “realized they did not need to take the law seriously,” and started passing waivers. Same with the Pay-Go legislation enacted to great theatrics again in 2007. On paper it requires disciplined spending – but nearly every appropriations bill since 2007 has included a Pay-Go waiver.

The supposedly mandatory, automatic cuts might later be quietly repealed. Among the most important public policy books of the last decade is Reform at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted, by Eric Patashnik of the University of Virginia. This 2006 book details how Congress enacts what appear to be super-dramatic reforms, but as soon as the media spotlight shifts elsewhere, lobbyists and committee chairs quietly undo the reforms by repealing sentences or paragraphs of the legislation. Often the repeals are hidden in seemingly innocuous “technical corrections” bills deliberately worded so as to be incomprehensible. The supposedly mandatory super committee spending cuts may disappear in this fashion.

A core reason why Washington keeps borrowing too much, and taxing too little, is that national leaders know that if they behave irresponsibly, in the short term nothing will happen.

In the long term, though, the United States will become Greece. At that point, it will be too obvious for Washington to deny what has happened, and it will also be too late to do anything about it.

Photo: An aide peeks in the committee room door as Democratic members of the ‘super committee’ wrap up a meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington November 16, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Increasingly, Mitt Romney seems the Republican candidate who has given serious thought to governing – to what specific policy actions he would take if he became president. The other Republican candidates seem mainly concerned with self-promotion and applause lines, while Newt Gingrich’s “Day 1 Project” seems more like a dress rehearsal than a real concept for governing.

If Romney is the serious challenger to President Barack Obama, then his fiscal policy speech a few days ago bears inspection. It was notably better than most campaign speeches, and contained both gold and dross. Here are some highlights:

Gold: “We cannot with moral conscience borrow trillions of dollars that can only be repaid by our children.” Reckless borrowing, with the invoice passed to our children – nobody in power in Washington right now will be asked to repay the national debt – is not just numbers, it is a moral issue. Romney recognizes this.

Dross: Obama is to blame for “massive defense cuts.” Democrats always accuse Republicans of wanting to despoil the environment; Republicans always accuse Democrats of wanting a weak defense. Neither claim is true. Converted to today’s dollars, the 2000 defense budget was $390 billion. Check Table 32-1 for the key Pentagon numbers under Obama. The 2010 defense budget, the first Obama fully controlled, was $690 billion, and this year’s defense budget is $708 billion. “Massive defense cuts” is not true. Although the White House does project a decline in defense spending to $620 billion in 2013, almost all the projected reduction stems from the expected ends of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t everyone want those wars to end?

Gold: “I will make government simpler, smaller, and smarter.” In Romney’s case this is not just rhetoric, since he helped make Massachusetts government simpler, smaller and smarter. Compared to most other states, Massachusetts has a strong economy, good health care coverage for average people and a relatively small debt. If Romney could do for the nation what he did for Massachusetts, we’d all be happy.

Dross: Seniors should be angry at the White House because “it was President Obama who cut $500 billion from Medicare.” The essence of doubletalk is to say that federal spending must be reduced, and then denounce spending cuts. Equally important, Obama has not reduced Medicare spending, and Romney must know this.

The “$500 billion Medicare cuts” figure being batted around by Republican candidates is an estimate for 10 years of projected future reductions from unspecified future savings to be identified by the new Independent Payment Advisory Board, whose advice does not even start until 2014. Obama’s own actuaries have warned there is an “extremely low likelihood” many projected Medicare cuts will occur.

Twenty-four karat gold: Romney placed his hand on the third rail of American politics, by proposing Social Security cutbacks. He said, “I believe we can save Social Security with a few commonsense reforms. First, there will be no change for retirees or those near retirement. No change. Second, for the next generation of retirees, we should slowly raise the retirement age. And finally, for the next generation of retirees, we should slow the growth in benefits for those with higher incomes.”

The test of leadership is saying what your audience does not want to hear. John Kennedy proved he was a leader by telling the East Coast liberal establishment that the old Soviet Union was a dire threat, something it did not want to hear. Lyndon Johnson proved he was a leader by telling Southern states the Civil Rights Act must pass. Ronald Reagan proved he was a leader by telling conservatives the time had come for arms control.

Is Romney the one to tell America what it does not want to hear about Social Security? There simply is no escape route from the red-ink mess that does not include raising the Social Security retirement age (lifespans are significantly increased from when the system was created), slowing the growth in benefits and reducing benefits to the well-off.

The Social Security trustees report that the system can currently pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits. In 2010, the report notes, that system wasn’t even self-sustaining, having to draw on the federal debt. If benefits aren’t trimmed, either taxes must rise or the federal deficit must accelerate anew. Neither would be good for the country, and that’s assuming China would keep loaning us additional money, which may not be an accurate assumption.

Beyond that, Social Security is not and has never been an investment program: it is an income transfer program, taking from working-age people and giving to retirees. Many seniors need their Social Security checks, but those who don’t should no longer receive them. That average working-age people are being taxed to fund income transfers to well-off seniors is bad policy, and not moral. National leaders including President Obama strenuously avoid speaking the truth about Social Security, because that truth is so unpopular.

Should Romney reach the White House, a measure of his presidency will be whether he keeps the promises made in this speech.

Photo: Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney listens as former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu speaks at a campaign stop in Exeter, New Hampshire November 3, 2011. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

When Al Gore was in the White House, global warming was a disaster of the first order. Republican presidential candidates are now saying it is anything from a fraud to trivial.

Both sides claim sound science, and both are wrong. In politics, “sound science” means whatever supports your preconceived positions.

For American voters, climate change is an issue offering lessons in how to reject political nonsense on the extremes, and find the middle. If we can’t find the middle of a generation-long concern like climate change, one where modest steps are sufficient for the moment, how will we ever tackle immediate issues such as jobs, debt and the looming retirement of the Baby Boomers?

First, here are the positions of Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. (Herman Cain has not taken a position on climate change.)

Last June, Romney said in New Hampshire: “I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer” and that “humans contribute to that.” In New England, voters of both parties tend to support environmental protection. Romney’s June statement is similar to what George W. Bush said when he was president.

Speaking last month in Pennsylvania, a coal-producing state, Romney switched gears, saying, “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course.” Watch what he says here beginning at 2:17.

Perry, both speaking and in his campaign book “Fed Up”, has said climate change claims are based on “doctored data” and that “we are seeing almost weekly or even daily scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing our climate to change.”

My guess is that the “doctored data” to which Perry refers is probably Climate-Gate – a real but trivial scandal which has assumed conspiracy-theory status on the right. The researchers who sent the Climate-Gate emails may have been nutty as fruitcakes, but do not represent the academic mainstream.

The “scientists… coming forward” to which Perry refers probably are in this petition, which Rush Limbaugh has talked up. Organized under the name of Frederick Seitz, a distinguished past president of the National Academy of Sciences, the petition, supposedly signed by 31,487 scientists, claims claims “there is no convincing scientific evidence” of imminent danger from artificial greenhouse gases. Seitz, who died in 2008, was 87 years of age when he endorsed the petition. The sample card appears to bear the signature of the late Hungarian-American scientist Edward Teller, who was 90 yards of age when the petition began.

To be listed as a “scientist” signer, you only check a box attesting that you are. No credentials or affiliations for the signatories are given. I pulled three names from the signature list at random — Robert Simpson Hahn, Cathryn E. Hahn and Gregory A. Hahn. None appear on any science organization membership list or academic directory that I could locate; a Robert Simpson Hahn published a chemistry dissertation in 1944. Whether the petition actually has been signed by 31,487 working scientists is anyone’s guess.

What does the science mainstream think? In May, the National Research Council warned the “risk of dangerous climate change impacts is growing.” Last month the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study, led by Richard Muller, a prominent physicist and previously a climate change skeptic, concluded that “global warming is real”.

In 2005, the National Academy of Sciences joined the science academies of Britain, Germany, Japan and other nations in a joint statement saying, “There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring.” And, in 2006, the federal Climate Change Science Program, under the direction of the George W. Bush White House, found “clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.”

Mainstream researchers could be wrong, of course. But it’s unlikely Rick Perry knows more about climate change than the National Academy of Sciences. Just as Gore’s Hollywood exaggerations about global warming made you wince, the right’s current fad for global-warming denial is also wince-inducing.

One aspect of that denial in the Republican campaigns may be a desire to create a bogeyman for the false notion that carbon dioxide regulations are to blame for unemployment rates. Michele Bachmann has called the Environmental Protection Agency the “jobs-killing organization of America”, for example. Since the United States currently has no carbon dioxide regulations, this seems fantastical.

A defensible fear is that the United States ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, or its successor treaty now under discussion, would give United Nations’ bureaucrats input into U.S. domestic energy policy. That would be bad for the American economy, while surely the United Nations would accomplish nothing at a great expense. Last year, I argued that the United States should drop out of international carbon negotiations and start its own greenhouse-gas reform program.

Republican candidates are well-advised to be wary of the Kyoto concept. But they’re wrong to pretend climate change is not a danger. Slowly rising global temperatures, and the accompanying climate impacts, are supported by a strong body of research. They won’t cause the doomsday that Gore so fervently expresses, but greenhouse gas levels could plague our descendants — and will be a lot cheaper to deal with now than later.

Plus, the initial steps that would be taken to moderate greenhouse gases – improved energy efficiency, more use of natural gas and uranium, less use of coal and oil – are in the interest of the United States, regardless of climate trends. And they may be a lot more practical than supposed. See that argument here.

Photos, top to bottom: People balance as they walk on a flooded railway in Bangkok November 2, 2011. Thai authorities tried to stem growing anger among flood victims on Tuesday as water swamped new neighbourhoods and the government began mapping out a plan costing billions of dollars to prevent a repeat disaster and secure investor confidence. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj; A boy swims in the murky waters of Manila Bay, in this file picture taken March 21, 2010. REUTERS/Cheryl Ravelo/Files