Hamill: The crazy aunt is screaming. Is anyone listening?

I want to talk about our crazy aunt in the basement. Remember her? Sure, you do. Everybody knows she’s there, but no one wants to talk about her.

So said billionaire Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race. Perot ran as a self-funded independent. He finished with just under 20% of the popular vote.

Perot tried to call the nation’s attention to what he considered to be a series of emergencies.

The crazy aunt referred to the budget deficit and the national debt. Perot showed, with charts, that we had a $341 billion annual deficit and $4.1 trillion total federal debt.

He talked about how the size of the debt was crowding out the ability of the government to invest in public goods to benefit the nation’s future.

Perot explained that Taiwan, which was “a little piece of Texas” with less than 10% of the population of the U.S., was outspending us.

Taiwan planned to spend $600 billion in public investment for the future. The U.S. planned $150 billion over the same period.

Japan, described as the size of Montana, planned $80 billion of public spending. Germany planned $1 trillion (it was rebuilding the former East Germany).

Perot said that the U.S. outspent all other nations in health care spending in 1992, yet ranked 16th in life expectancy and 23rd in infant mortality.

He explained that from 1977 to 1992, only the top 20% of the income distribution gained economically. From 1977 to 1992, the top 5% gained 60%, and the top 1% gained 138%.

Perot claimed the Washington game was rigged against the regular guy. He said that was because of campaign giving by the wealthy.

Perot said the country was “wandering around saying everything will work out if we don’t do anything.”

He explained our costly health care as, “We’ve bought a front row box seat, air conditioned and didn’t get to see the show.”

Perot did not win. We went on to elect a two-term Democrat, a two-term Republican, a two-term Democrat, a two-term Republican, with a one-term Democrat mixed in.

So many two-termers must mean we are quite pleased with how things have gone after the Perot campaign.

So, how are things working out? The national debt reached $36 trillion last year. The annual deficit has been $1.7 trillion to $1.8 trillion each of the last three years.

We even reached an annual deficit of $3.1 trillion in 2020. Perot proposed an annual campaign limit of $1,000. It’s now effectively unlimited.

What about health care? Surely that’s a thing we would want to fix. The U.S. now ranks 49th in life expectancy. We rank 54th in infant mortality.

State and local governments spend four times what the federal government does on public infrastructure projects.

Dwight Eisenhower saw the benefits of the German road system in the 1940s and built the interstate highway system in his two-term presidency.

Over 30 years after the Perot campaign, we still seem to be wandering around, saying everything will work out if we don’t do anything.

We still have the front row, air-conditioned box seat at the health care theater and keep getting closed out of the shows.

Do we not appreciate emergencies as Perot did? Hard to say. We do seem to know a thing or two about emergencies.

In the first six months of the current Trump term, we declared eight national emergencies. Yay! We finally heard the crazy aunt in the basement!

Or not. The first day of the term had three emergencies: the southern border, energy and designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Soon after, a drug emergency at the northern border, a tariff emergency with Mexico, Canada and China, and a cybersecurity innovation emergency.

Then, an emergency sanction on the International Criminal Court and a reciprocal tariff emergency.

Just before the new tax bill passed in July, we added an emergency sanction against Brazil.

Less than a month ago, we included a Cuban emergency. National debt. Annual deficit. Health care. Life expectancy. Infant mortality. Nope, none of them.

We do seem to appreciate a good emergency. Ross Perot died in 2019. The crazy aunt is now yelling so loud in that basement that she just might wake the dead.

Jim Hamill is the director of tax practice at Reynolds, Hix & Co. in Albuquerque. He can be reached at jimhamill@rhcocpa.com.