Reducing debt relies on sticking to core party beliefs

But the GOP has failed to do either yet, for some reason. Maybe they are not really serious about reducing these deficits and national debt either, just like the Democrats? Nah, it just makes your brain reel if it had to believe that both major political parties in the United States of America could be so nonchalant about the threats of exploding deficits and compounding interest on the national debt now at $14 trillion and heading higher daily.

Watch them both very carefully on each of these fronts. If you see either side take either respective action, you will know for a fact that they are actually taking this explosive debt seriously and taking action to prevent it from growing even worse.

But just to reiterate, and make it as easy as possible, here are a couple of things Congress could pass this afternoon which would start to reduce the structural deficits in the federal budget and cost next to nothing in terms of outlays from Washington:

1. Tort reform and malpractice insurance reform will knock the pillars of spiraling cost out of health care inflation and flatten the costs of Medicare and Medicaid which are the two programs that are killing us fiscally. If it ‘only’ saves 1 percent of the health care costs as opponents of tort reform claim, then what are they so afraid of? They will have been proven ‘right’ and we would have still ‘saved’ something like $26 billion per year in overall health care costs in this nation. (We think savings could be as high as $100 billion per year to the federal health programs, Medicare and Medicaid alone.)
2. Raise the retirement age in both Social Security and Medicare in successive staged increments to 70, with the only exceptions being severe medical or physical handicaps attested by licensed physicians and psychiatrist.
3. Eliminate the anti-trust exemptions for the health insurance industry (and for Major League Baseball while we are at it…why those two industries are the only two legal exceptions from monopolistic regulations is beyond us anyway) and let the free market work to push prices down across the board.

We really want our elected leaders in Congress to “do the right thing” and reduce spending first to balance the budgets. Maybe if each party would be honest with the American people and put forth proposals like we suggest above, we might have a chance to have a full-blown national debate this year on how to best achieve those goals.

But not if they run and hide and don’t spell out the tough options we have before us. All of the “easy” decisions have been made, and look at where that has gotten us as a nation.

Frank Hill has served as chief of staff to former Congressman Alex McMillan (R-N.C.), House Budget Committee staff, Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform staff, and as chief of staff to former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.).