It’s funny, and quite sad, how America is focused on short-term issues and continually fails to address long-term problems. Our highest priorities are what we have now, not what is best over the long term. We seem to live in a “state of denial” concerning long-term issues. The National Debt, Climate Change, and Social Security Funding are three of our biggest long-term issues that no reasonable attempt has been made to address. These clearly demonstrate America’s unwillingness to tackle long-term problems to the peril of all of us.
Most Americans understand the national debt is enormous and growing at an unsustainable pace. Already, more than one-third of our tax dollars effectively goes toward interest payments alone. With the passage of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, nearly half of our taxes could be spent after the next decade simply paying interest on the national debt. The main beneficiaries are the wealthiest Americans, whose tax burden has been significantly reduced. At the same time, the cost of living has become unbearable for low- to middle-income Americans. It seems like Congress is solely focused on doing what’s best for the wealthiest people who contribute to their campaigns for reelection. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, and the other richest one percent of Americans pay little or no taxes. An average wage earner in America pays over 30 percent of their income in taxes. Our tax code in America is nearly 7,000 pages long, making it impossible for an average person to understand it. Warning bells have been going off for decades on Social Security solvency, and now we are looking at a 22% reduction in benefits in the very near future because, once again, no one is doing any real work to solve this long-known issue. Yet, we voters continue to elect the same politicians who remain in Congress for decades and do literally nothing to address these long-term problems.
Most Americans believe climate change is real and caused largely by burning coal and petroleum products, yet we treat it as a relatively low priority. Meanwhile, each summer grows hotter than the last, weather extremes continue to increase, either high-intensity flood events or extreme drought, and forest and rangeland fires continue to grow larger, start earlier, and burn later into the fall. Summers used to be enjoyable; now July and August are typically hot and often smoky.
Many reservoirs run dry, or nearly dry, each summer. The Great Salt Lake in Utah continues to shrink, as do many other large natural lakes across the West. The Colorado River and many Idaho rivers are also losing flow. On average, snowpack in the Rocky Mountains has declined by 20 percent over the past 50 years. As climate change accelerates, water will remain one of the West’s most serious challenges, yet we continue to neglect it because it is a long-term problem we expect someone else to solve.
Idaho offers a clear example of short-term thinking. During the last legislative session, lawmakers cut taxes for the wealthiest residents while reducing funding for programs that address long-term needs. Public education remains chronically underfunded, and programs that protect or improve Idaho’s water quality also faced cuts last year. Many rivers and streams continue to carry heavy sediment loads into reservoirs. In most years, the Weiser River in western Idaho deposits nearly 70,000 tons of sediment into Brownlee Reservoir. Brownlee was once 52 miles long, but sediment has filled the upper 10 miles, reducing it to about 42 miles. The Portneuf River adds roughly 12,000 tons of sediment each year to American Falls Reservoir, a buildup that is visible from the air in late summer. As these reservoirs gradually fill with sediment, water supplies for irrigation, hydropower, and healthy fisheries will decline. Because these are long-term problems, we continue to ignore and fail to address them.
We are in desperate need of a simplified and fair tax code. All Americans should pay their fair share. Right now, the middle-class wage earner is carrying the load. Social Security is the safety net for many in America, and any reduction of this earned, not entitlement, benefit will deeply impact their ability to survive economically.
We need term limits, so politicians can focus on doing the right thing. Right now, politicians at the federal level are mostly concerned about getting reelected, remaining loyal to their party, and focusing much of their energy on funding themselves for the next campaign.
In Idaho, we pride ourselves on being conservative, but being conservative doesn’t have to mean being stupid. When we have a problem, we need to address it, not continue to vote for the same people who simply call themselves conservative. It’s up to us as voters. The future of our country and state is dependent on us.