The Lesson of the Carp

The Great Lakes States’ battle against an invasive and destructive fish provides a metaphor for the growing fiscal crisis facing our country

In Wisconsin where I live, we naturally treasure Lake Michigan. That lake and all the Great Lakes now face the threat of Asian carp invading by way of the Illinois River and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

Scientists and state and federal government officials have known about the carp for years. Each year, they move farther upstream toward Lake Michigan. Everyone knows they need to be stopped, because if they get into the lake, they could multiply rapidly, disrupt the food chain with their voracious eating, and destroy a multi-billion-dollar fishing industry, not to mention the entire Great Lakes ecosystem.

To keep the carp out of the lakes, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. EPA, the State of Illinois, the International Joint Commission, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are working together to install and maintain a permanent electric barrier.

But there’s a problem: Various interests are fighting. Where are we going to get the money? What about this barrier’s effect on commercial shipping? What about the safety of boaters? Dispute follows dispute. Delay follows delay. And each year the carp move farther upstream.

And if in the end the carp make it into Lake Michigan, we will all have to look at ourselves and say: We saw this coming. Why didn’t we stop it? How could we have been so incredibly stupid?

Of fish and budgets

So it is with our governments — federal, state and local. For the sake of simplicity, let’s stick with federal for now. Argue all the partisan politics all you want — a few facts are beyond dispute.

The economic recession put people out of work and drastically reduced tax revenue to the treasury. We borrowed vast amounts of money to bail out banks, other financial institutions and car companies. We borrowed more vast amounts to stimulate the economy and get people back to work. We did all this at a time when the federal budget deficit and the national debt were already at frightening levels.

Blame whichever political party you want — we have what we have. And what we have is a national debt of $12.6 trillion, growing every second. And a federal budget deficit for this year alone of $1.4 trillion. We can’t comprehend numbers that size, but we can comprehend these: The national debt per citizen is now $41,000, and the national debt per taxpayer is $115,000.

If that isn’t scary enough, go to www.usdebt clock.org. There you will see all these figures, not as static numbers but changing (that is, increasing) in real time. It is surreal. It is dizzying to watch.

What to do now?

No sane person thinks we can continue to accumulate debt at this pace. A revitalized economy will help turn the tide, but even if that happened today, we would still be in a very deep hole. At $12.6 trillion, that’s a lot of digging.

To get out of this, we first have to accept that it won’t be easy. Somewhere along the line, in government and in our personal lives, we got the idea that we can have things without paying for them. That idea must leave our heads permanently. If we’re going to spend a dollar, we have to raise a dollar somehow.

Second, we have to make up our minds to get it done. Plans will need to be brought forward. No plan that makes sense will be without pain. Collectively, through our elected representatives, we will need to weigh the alternatives and act. Otherwise, the problem will only keep getting worse.

Who knows what manner of financial calamity awaits us and our children and grandchildren if as a country we don’t take action? And if the worst happens, we’ll know the anguish of looking back and saying we could have stopped it.

We’ll have to say to ourselves: We were standing on the railroad tracks. We heard and saw the train coming from miles away. Yet we just stood there and never even bothered to step aside. How could we have been so incredibly stupid?

This has to matter to everyone in government at every level. Which means it has to matter to everyone, period, because in our democratic society, the government is us. It’s time to get serious and fix this problem.



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