Our government borrows to spend. Carrying this paradigm into the future will saddle our generation with an unbearable cost. President Barack Obama will not be in power when we face the consequences of our country’s unsustainable path of debt accumulation, but his administration’s lack of fiscal leadership will be primarily to blame.

In the aggregate, we, the young voter demographic, voted for Obama by a wide margin in 2012, but it was against our own interests. Obama won us over by making nice-sounding entitlement promises that government cannot afford to keep.

Despite Obama’s claims of a “balanced” deficit reduction approach, members of his administration admit, both via statements and in budget documents, that they do not have a plan.

For instance, even if House Republicans voted for Obama’s 2013 budget proposal as-is, the long-term problems would not be solved. Obama and Democrats are recommending Obama’s 2013 budget as a fiscal cliff resolution, according to press secretary Jay Carney. But this does not control long-term costs.

The proof is in Obama’s Fiscal Year 2013 Analytical Perspectives Budget of the U.S. Government.

Namely, on page 58, Obama’s plan levels debt growth in terms of gross domestic product, but only for a limited time. “Beyond 2022, however, the fiscal position gradually deteriorates,” according to the document.

This will happen at about age 30 for students now attending Syracuse University as an undergraduate. Obama’s plan moves the impending fiscal crisis squarely into the exciting part of our lives.

Furthermore, Obama’s 2013 budget proposal includes the elimination of “unwarranted and fis­cally irresponsible Bush-era tax cuts for the highest-in­come families, limiting the value of tax deductions and preferences for the highest-income families, and closing a variety of tax loopholes.”

Hence, the argument that we can close the deficit and reduce the debt by soaking the rich to the Democrat’s specification is moot. The problem is government spending growth over time.

If Republicans carry out Obama’s plan — the plan Democrats recommend — we get fiscal deterioration. Fiscal deterioration, as described by the Analytical Perspectives document, means that the “deficit continues to rise for the next 75 years, and the publicly-held debt is also projected to rise persistently relative to GDP.”

This does not stop after the next 75 years. “Through the end of the projection period, in 2087, this figure would con­tinue to rise gradually,” according to the document.

Regarding the expected fiscal deterioration that will result from Obama’s plan, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted to House Republicans that the Obama administration and Democrats do not have a “definitive solution to this long-term problem, but what we do know is, we don’t like yours.”

As Geithner confirms, Democrats do not have a definitive solution, Republicans do have a solution, and the public cannot benefit from the Republicans’ definitive solution because the Democrats “don’t like” it.

Let’s show Democrats and the Obama administration that, in the aggregate, we regret voting for them by electing a Republican Senate in 2014 and Rand Paul for president in 2016.

Michael Stikkel is a junior computer engineering major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mcstikke@syr.edu.

Published on December 5, 2012 at 1:00 am