Why America Needs the Bowles-Simpson “Treaty” Right Away

Every time a senator or House member makes a joke about how low their approval ratings are, I always tell them the same thing: “They are now at a place where it isn’t funny.” The United States is slipping away both economically and fiscally, and with it go its democracy and the hearts and minds of the country’s citizens. I won’t go through a bunch of Gallup polls to prove this -- just trust me, it’s getting deadly.

I have a solution.

Put the Bowles-Simpson plan on the floor of the House and Senate and pass it. And here’s an idea: Change the name from “plan” to “treaty.” I am serious about this -- call it the Bowles-Simpson Treaty. I know that the formal definition of a treaty is between sovereign states, but that doesn’t matter. Call this a treaty -- it will signal peace between our country’s warring factions.

Everything in the U.S. would be different the day after this treaty passed. It would represent a new way forward for a divided country.

Here’s what must happen right now: President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Reid, as well as Mitt Romney, the Bushes, the Clintons, the talking heads from Fox to MSNBC, and you and me -- every single one of us has to rally America and say, “If your representatives don’t vote for this, their stubbornness amounts to treason. We’re all for the treaty because of the fiscal and budgetary give-and-take it contains -- the mix of spending cuts and tax increases, the shared pain and sacrifice across the board -- creates the ‘fairness’ we all demand. And it saves the country from fiscal ruin.”

Gallup finds the country more divided now than it has been in at least 75 years. The biggest divide is over the role the government plays in people's lives. But citizens and lawmakers can’t argue raising taxes, or cutting spending, or making Social Security solvent as individual items, as one-offs. That won’t work. Everybody has to give up something dear to them. That’s what Bowles-Simpson proposes. The solution lies within passing this one big treaty -- not in a hundred highly partisan knife fights.

Passing the Bowles-Simpson Treaty 435-0 and 100-0 would be one of the most profound moments in the history of American leadership and democracy. But this must happen soon, because the pressure to act is becoming unbearable. The United States is, honest to God, sitting on a fiscal and budgetary Titanic, and Congress and the administration are moving around the proverbial deck chairs.

“Americans Pass Bowles-Simpson Treaty.” That would be the headline in papers around the whole world. Instantly, everyone would know that America is back on track, Congress would be admired as much as the military, and the president would once again be leader of the free world. The chance for this miracle for American democracy is right in front of us.

How Mentors and Students Can Help America Win the GDP Race

Who will be the leader of the free world in 30 years? Straightforward answer: Whoever has the biggest GDP.

Let’s look at the math. The world’s GDP is currently more than $60 trillion. Over the next 30 years, that number is expected to grow to a whopping $200 trillion. And China is supposed to grow at a faster rate than the U.S. over these next three decades. So, whoever gets the most of the $140 trillion wins. It’s really that simple. And while America currently leads the global GDP race, China is the prohibitive favorite for these next 30 years.

Most Americans believe China is already the world’s leading economic power, even though the U.S. is still far and away the GDP leader, with $15 trillion of the global GDP,  or 25% of the current economic market share.

But, is it inevitable that China will surpass the U.S.? Not necessarily. If America’s incoming players for the next three decades, especially the kids currently in middle school and high school, are better prepared for business and entrepreneurship and are truly ready to compete, then they can surprise the world and the U.S. will re-win it.

Gallup and Operation Hope are scientifically measuring the entrepreneurial spirit of America’s students in partnership with the Gallup Hope Index. It might just be the most important U.S. poll ever. It discovered that 45% of students surveyed between fifth and 12th grade plan to start their own business and 42% believe they will “invent something that changes the world.” This means that there’s a huge amount of entrepreneurial and innovative energy currently in the nation’s schools to re-win the world.

But here’s the deadliest part: Only 5% of these kids are interning with local businesses or organizations. The U.S. is failing to develop the energy that could solve the biggest problems the country has: A declining percentage of global GDP and a lack of good jobs. If the country were to raise that internship number to 25%, everything would change. Mentoring and internships work and change students’ outlooks and life strategies. They would become more productive employees and eventually create more customers, businesses, and jobs.

There are 100 million real jobs and workers in the United States. If the U.S. were to simply assign the 30 million best Americans of this group to mentor and advise these kids, get them all in meaningful internships at an early age, let me tell you: That would not only change America for the next 30 years -- it would change the world.

What’s Really Standing in the Way of Job Creation

This election year, much of the talk has been about job, jobs, jobs. Mainly: Where are the jobs going to come from that will juice the U.S. economy? Gallup’s own chief economist, Dennis Jacobe, even testified before Congress recently on job creation. 

Let me clue you in on a little secret within the world of free enterprise. When the CEOs of America’s 6 million companies -- small, medium-sized, and large -- get up every morning, including this one blogging, not one of us is thinking about how we can create jobs. That may be the prize for politicians, but it isn’t for us. What every single one of us is thinking about, is how can we create and keep customers. Nobody currently in Washington, D.C., nor in most state or local governments, knows this little secret.

There will be no new quality GDP growth and zero authentic, organic job creation until America’s 6 million businesses create new customers here and overseas. There is no other way. Jobs follow new customers, not the other way around, and only CEOs honestly know this.

So what’s holding back 6 million tiny-, little-, medium-, and big-company CEOs from creating more customers? What’s the biggest problem we face? When Gallup posed this question to small business owners, the answers weren’t what you usually read on op-ed pages or hear from many politicians. The most cited problem wasn’t a lack of credit availability or slack consumer demand.

No, they told Gallup their biggest hurdle is “complying with government regulations.” So, I would argue that the single fastest way to get 6 million businesses sticking their necks out to create customers is to act on this very significant finding. If they want to help, Washington must stop creating new regulations. Stop sending out “new rules.”  The more they lead with new rules and regulations, the worse they make things.

I’m not arguing that we don’t need more regulations for labor, the environment, healthcare, the disabled, long-term unemployment, and others.  Maybe we do need those things. But Washington shouldn’t be imposing those regulations until customers -- and jobs -- start rushing back.

Bluntly put, our politicians’ timing is backward and misguided. Current leadership is badly misinterpreting the will of 6 million CEOs, among our most important Americans -- the only ones with honest-to-God solutions to creating badly needed good jobs.

Here is the reality: The more government regulations announced and communicated, the more CEO confidence declines. The lower CEO confidence is, the fewer customers there will be. The fewer customers there are, the fewer jobs there will be. Among the people who run America’s businesses, this is no secret.

Why the U.S. Healthcare Law Misses the Point

The coming decision by the Supreme Court on the Affordable Care Act likely won’t make much difference to the future of America, regardless of how the justices rule. That’s because, no matter what they decide, the whole healthcare law itself doesn’t address the nation’s real health problems.

This is not a partisan position. Let me explain.

At $2.5 trillion annually, healthcare costs are America’s single biggest national expense, by far. Nothing even comes close, not the war in Afghanistan, not the Wall Street bailouts, or various entitlements. America’s healthcare bill is three times the size of the nation’s defense bill and the same size as the entire economy of Russia and India added together. The size of America’s healthcare bill is staggering and much larger than anyone knows.

We spend an average of $8,000 per person while countries like England, Canada, and Germany spend an average of just $4,000 per citizen. And their citizens live longer than we do.

It gets worse. At the current annual 6% growth rate of healthcare costs, our total healthcare bill will go from $2.5 trillion to almost exactly $4.5 trillion in 10 years. If you add the stubs of the increases over the 10-year period, above the running $2.5 trillion our debt-burdened nation already lacks, we’ll see $10 trillion in surprise new tax costs. To put this in perspective, our coming healthcare costs are three times the size of the subprime meltdown that brought America and the world to our knees. We may have survived the subprime mess, but health costs will honestly break the republic.

Here’s what blows me away: Our government reports that 70% of all these costs are for preventable diseases. Bluntly, we’re eating ourselves to sickness and death and seeing epidemic rates of diabetes, according to government studies. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index finds that two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese. And we’re all paying about $1 trillion per year to respond to these problems rather than prevent them.

In the middle of this deadly crisis, the whole healthcare debate is focused on exactly the wrong things: on how to pay for insurance and now also on the constitutionality of a law, rather than how to prevent killers like obesity and diabetes in the first place.

I know it sounds too simple, but eating and obesity are the nation’s biggest health problems, not “Who pays for insurance?” and “How does all of this relate to the Commerce Clause?”

If our elected officials, from both parties, attacked the cause rather than the effects, they could save America. If they understood what Gallup knows -- that a focus on wellbeing will put any nation on a path to economic prosperity -- they could improve not just America’s health, but everything from jobs to the GDP. But I’m afraid we’re going to continue debating irrelevancies like how nine justices will rule…which is just shifting deck chairs on an undeniably sinking ship.