In a recent Sutherland Institute Congressional Series event, Rep. Blake Moore spoke about federal government spending, including mandatory spending versus discretionary spending and the national debt. He discussed federal spending that increases automatically each year without any vote from Congress (mandatory spending) and federal spending that is determined each year by votes in Congress (discretionary spending) and how the proportion of each in the federal budget has tilted toward mandatory spending over time.

One comment from Moore highlighted a particular challenge of statesmanship and political leadership amid political pressure:

So if it’s all spending, what does it matter? Well, if you add a bunch to mandatory spending, that doesn’t take away from what you’re able to do for discretionary spending if we’re going to allow for these deficits to continue to go on and on each year. … And who loses? My kids do because it is the thing that will cripple us as a nation going forward.

The federal deficit is the amount of federal government spending each year that exceeds the amount of tax revenue it collects. Deficits add to the national debt, which taxpayers must pay interest on for years – even generations – to come.

The political pressure (from lobbyists, advocacy groups and average voters) to spend more now, regardless of tax revenues – combined with the multigenerational financial impact of federal deficits and debt – highlights a civic principle: leadership in policymaking requires balancing the long-term, common good of the state or nation against the short-term political pressure to forget the former.

Renowned economist Thomas Sowell has said that “there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs.” This is an accurate description of the aspiration to balance the long-term common good and short-term political pressures.

It is a basic reality of politics that elected officials face tremendous political pressure to deliver tangible results in the short term. An important question that women and men running for re-election face is “what have you accomplished for us while in office?” This isn’t the only question elected officials must answer, and in some cases it may not be what their reelection hinges on. Nevertheless, having nothing to show for several years of work in our state’s or nation’s capital is not a position any elected official wants to find themselves in.

When it comes to spending, that pressure often translates into policy decisions that, by themselves, tend to increase federal deficits. This is true for Republicans (e.g., spending more on national security or cutting taxes) and Democrats (e.g., spending more on healthcare or environmental programs).

The long-term common good, on the other hand, would point to avoiding excessive amounts of national debt to avoid overburdening future citizens who will be paying the majority of the interest on those debts. The stakes of this short-term vs. long-term dynamic are significant. As one international political thinker has written, “Democracy has many advantages, but its pitfalls include a tendency toward short-term return over longer-term interests. … [T]he current modus operandi of the leading democracies leaving their citizens exposed to significant strategic risk, but it is also undermining faith in democracy itself.”

This points to a vision of true political leadership and statesmanship among elected officials: the ability to lead a body of policymakers to balance short-term political gain with the long-term common good. In the government spending context, a true political leader will persuade their colleagues of both the need for federal spending on urgent priorities and the importance of restraining or reducing deficits to keep the national debt at a manageable long-term level.

Such leadership is possible, even on federal spending, deficits and debts. In the lifetime of a majority of Americans (just over 20 years ago) the federal government achieved not only a balanced budget, but a federal surplus.

Maintaining reasonable levels of national debt while spending federal taxpayer dollars on important federal policy priorities is doable. But it will require political will that is cultivated by genuine political leadership.