EDITORIAL: Plan to cut federal red ink deserves attention

Kamala Harris is hiding from tough questions, and Donald Trump appears wholly uninterested in the topic. As both major presidential candidates ignore the national debt, it briskly climbs toward an unfathomable $36 trillion.

For perspective, the nation’s red ink was roughly $10.3 trillion when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009.

This unsustainable trajectory represents a threat to the country’s future. Yet elected officials in Washington remain petrified of tackling this mounting problem for fear of losing their cushy sinecures. Rather than make a rational case to voters about the importance of charting a fiscally sane course, members of Congress prefer to turn a blind eye to the obvious in an effort at self-preservation. That’s what passes for statesmanship these days.

But every second spent avoiding the subject only increases the magnitude of the challenge and pushes us closer to fiscal calamity. Enter former Vice President Mike Pence and his new nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom. “America faces a bleak future,” the group warns, “as interest payments crowd out spending on basic government functions, our economy stagnates under the drag of an unsustainable burden and we’re put at a strategic disadvantage internationally.”

The group has compiled a blueprint for slowing the tide of red ink. While many Democrats believe the nation must tax its way to solvency, the Pence nonprofit understands that revenues — even after the Trump tax cuts — have continued to flow into Washington at record rates but a “sustainable federal budget is impossible to achieve without addressing the root cause of our spiraling debt and deficit: unchecked spending.”

To that end, the report embraces dozens of reforms for mandatory and discretionary spending while still “protecting the truly needy.” Among the proposals are stricter work requirements for safety net programs, the elimination of Affordable Care Act subsidies for wealthy Americans, reducing farm handouts and means testing for entitlement cost-of-living adjustments.

Also in the group’s crosshairs are congressional earmarks and tax carve-outs for favored industries.

“Politicians often talk about the national debt,” the nonprofit observes. But the “fear of taking away a government program has paralyzed lawmakers and driven America to the edge of fiscal ruin.”

It’s likely too much to ask that Beltway insiders take the Pence proposal — or Sen. Ron Paul’s “six-penny plan” to restrain deficits — with the seriousness it deserves. But it’s well past time that somebody began shouting from the mountaintops about the dangers of our current course. If the Advancing American Freedom blueprint helps hasten a serious discussion about Washington’s addiction to spending other people’s money, it will have served a vital purpose.