When Mitt Romney or Barack Obama open their election box to see what they’ve won, they may quickly shut the lid and cry for a recount.
President Obama will deal with the fiscal cliff, regardless. He will be in charge until Jan. 20, win or lose.
But the fiscal challenges will remain. A new tax structure must be created; a new budget tailored to fit the revenue to be collected must be made. Both must have integrity: that is, the tax structure must be acceptable to the people and must generate enough revenue to provide a path to a balanced budget and debt reduction and the budgets to come must be created with that end clearly in view.
Whoever is president, whichever party controls Congress, must adopt economic policies that will bolster long-term growth. That imperative is most likely to be achieved if the next administration puts the brightest economists it can hire in charge. Ideological road maps are most likely to take the country over the cliff rather than down the road to a stronger economy.
About 12.3 million Americans still are unemployed. The middle class is struggling. Only long-term answers will meet these challenges. The next administration must do what can be done to prepare America’s workers for the jobs today’s world economy produces. This demand is directly tied in to the need to increase middle class family income and reduce the yawning gap between the rich and the rest.
Today 1 percent of the people control 20 percent of the wealth — that is a moral abomination that represents a serious threat to our democracy.
A better answer to the health care crisis must be at the top of the next president’s agenda. It is a crisis because the U.S. spends about 17 percent of its gross national product on health care and still has about 50 million of us uninsured. The burden will only grow larger as the population ages unless the system is rebuilt and administrative costs are greatly reduced. Coming up with an efficient, effective universal health care delivery system will be one of the biggest challenges the president — either one of them — will face.
President 2013 must also end the war in Afghanistan — already the longest war in U.S. history — without obligating the U.S. to accept any further responsibility for that nation’s future.
Ending the war will begin a discussion on future military policy and future military spending. At present, the United States of America spends more on its military than do the next 17 largest countries. Should that enormous difference be continued? Reduced? Increased? The next president must answer the question.
Those are just the biggest, ugliest, unsolved problems that will be dumped in President Whoever’s lap come Jan. 20.
Emerson Lynn, jr.
