It's Generational Warfare, Now Deal With It
by Frederick M. Hess • Sep 7, 2011 at 8:13 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareFolks, generational warfare is here. As Congress's "super committee" begins its deliberations with an eye towards its November deadline, and as the debate for 2012 heats up, it's time for those in the education space to pick a side. You're either with the kids or with those rushing to the ramparts to defend retiree entitlements. So, which is it?
Consider the President's vague calls last week to spend billions more on school construction and preserving school staffing levels (which would've been more compelling if he had offered any inkling as to how we might pay for it). Obama finds himself unable to do more than offer marginal, dead-on-arrival programs because the feds have spent more than half the budget just mailing checks to retirees, covering health care bills, and paying interest on the accumulated debt. Everything else--schools, financial aid, the FBI, defense, transportation, the environment, NASA, foreign aid, you name it--has to make do with what's left.
As Julia Isaacs at the Brookings Institution has pointed out, the federal government now spends about $7 on seniors for every $1 it spends on children--even though the poverty rate among children is higher, with 21
