The cartoon made me laugh. Maybe it’s funny because it’s based in truth.   Although I hope that our national litany of mini-crises and scandals will end soon, I don’t expect it.  These stormy times are distracting us from more important issues, particularly our national financial situation.

President Trump and a congressional majority temporarily suspended the nation’s debt ceiling through March 1, 2019.  The Trump tax cuts went into effect. Wars continued.  Health care costs continued to rise.  Deficit spending increased.  The national debt continued to grow.  But no one has to deal with the mess until after the 2018 elections and a new congress might delay action until after a 2020 Presidential election.

Meanwhile, on March 12, the Treasury Department reported that our budget deficit grew by $215 billion in the month of February alone.  Here’s the outlook.  The combined expenses of the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and interest on the national debt will consume nearly all (non-Social Security) tax revenue this year.  At this pace, by 2019 or 2020 absolutely everything else would have to be financed by more borrowing.

The non-partisan Peterson Foundation estimates that by 2027 – just 9 years from now, interest on our debt will cost $800 billion.  That’s more than the budget of our Defense Department!

Our President distracts us with just about every kind of scandal that we can imagine (including a few that we’d rather not imagine).  When the congress or the press begins to address one of them, he creates a new one.  While our attention is diverted, President Trump and his “borrow and spend” Republican Congress are steering the ship of state onto the rocks.  Before it crashes, there are some things that we should do.

Foremost, we should rid ourselves of Donald Trump or elect a congress that will rein him in.  Second, we should bring home our troops from the two longest and least productive wars in our history.  That will save a lot of lives while we reduce our military spending.  Third, we need to pick and stick to a long term health care reform plan that covers us all while reducing our costs per person to roughly the same levels as are spent by other wealthy nations.  Each nation has its unique way of doing that.  What they all have in common is that they get results equal to  or better than ours, cover everyone, and cost half to two thirds of what we spend.

Fourth, we must raise our federal taxes back to a reasonable level.  They’ve been cut too low.  One good way to do that is to totally eliminate corporate taxes and then count all corporate profits as income to the shareholders, taxable at their personal rates.  We’ll also need to re-impose the inheritance tax on large estates and close some of the loopholes created for the wealthy.  If we don’t have the discipline to do that, then we’ll need a constitutional amendment that requires balanced budgets.

The end may or may not be near, but it is too close for comfort and there is only scant attention to the impending fiscal crisis in our daily news reports.  If we wait much longer to act we’ll be unable to sustain both our standard of living and our national defense.  The “end” will be upon us.

There are two mildly humorous maxims that I learned many years ago while employed by the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor and the Religious Sisters of Mercy.  They applied to health care ministries and just as surely, they apply to nations.  First,  “In order to do good, you have to do well.”    If we fail to maintain our financial strength, we won’t be able to provide education, health care, safety, recreation, or infrastructure – the government services on which we all rely.

The second maxim is “The management is always gone before the money is.”  It can have two meanings.  It might mean that the owners (us) figure out the problem and replace the management (President and many in Congress).  That’s what we need to do.  The alternate meaning is that the management took or wasted the money and left a failing enterprise behind.  If we let that happen, the end will indeed be near.