Damned, Voiceless Youth

Once upon a time in the U.S., politicians could be trusted to act in the best interest of America’s youth. It has long been conventional wisdom that candidates for office would be rewarded at the polls for dedicating energy, words, financial resources, and even political votes that served the interest of “our country’s children.” That time has passed.

Unfortunately, America’s youth is among the least organized of the special interests competing for the attention of lawmakers—perhaps, shockingly, even less organized then animal rights groups. We have no lobby, and we are getting robbed because of it. We are voiceless and have been damned to irrelevance.

On Monday, President Bush signed into law a bill approved by the Senate earlier this week raising the American federal debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion. Despite chiding Senators in his first speech as President in 2001 to pay down $2 trillion in debt over ten years, this is the fourth time during his administration that the ceiling has been raised, rather than lowered, in order to avoid default.

Times have changed, says the Bush administration, our country is at war. Indeed times have changed. But this war is being conducted in a manner that intentionally avoids asking most Americans to make a sacrifice. Instead, the administration has chosen to exploit America’s youth. We are, evidently, the only ones being asked to make sacrifices—both of our lives and from our pocketbooks.

The measure raises the debt ceiling by more than the $781 billion required by the administration’s prime magician, Secretary of Treasury John W. Snow, and it leaves promises of future rises—as early as next year—looming menacingly over our heads. All this, while Senators Edward M. Kennedy ’54-’56 (D-Mass.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), and Susan M. Collins (D-Maine) put forth a motion to reduce cutbacks in federal education spending. That motion failed.

And the administration has not increased the debt ceiling in order to buy time to address inevitable future expenses. As baby boomers draw nearer to retirement and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments skyrocket, the federal government has not yet found a way to pay for the increased prescription drug benefits of 2003. Meanwhile, billons continue to go down the Iraqi drain, with fresh funds flowing from Congress almost every other month to fund the administration’s flagship failure. Yet neither war nor terrorism changed the Republican conviction in lower taxes for the higher classes.

Snow’s pleas to Congress for more money, more debt, amount to more bills for future generations. But those generations are the ones that keep suffering the lack of attention from current the Federal government. We are appalled by the Houses’ rejection of a bill to halt cutbacks on education last week. It has become clear that America is ready to spend on foreign battlegrounds, tax cuts for successful middle-aged professionals, and benefits for powerful interest groups, but not for the generations being raised today. The federal myopia of not finding new sources of revenue condemns young people’s interests to the dust. Just think of the utter failure of the No Child Left Behind program.

The ceiling has been raised now, but not for America’s youth. If there is someone who needs Oprah’s Debt Diet, it is the men and women running our country. That—the $28,000 of per capita debt our federal state has saddled its children with—is something we should all remember during the election campaigns coming up later this year and beyond.