This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 31, 2011 - Congress has returned from spring break in time for April Fools' Day. A top priority for the reconvened lawmakers will be locating the specific constitutional passage that authorizes the president to bomb Libya so long as the French think doing so is a pretty good idea.
Of course, the humanitarian bombing campaign is now being officially conducted by NATO, of which the U.S. is but one member nation. However, as NATO is an acronym that often stands for "Needs America To Operate," look for your Uncle Sam to continue playing a leading role.
Meanwhile, on this side of the waters -- where the people whom the Defense Department was created to defend actually live -- a couple of problems merit attention. Not the least of these is the looming retirement crisis.
The Social Security Trust Fund consists solely of IOUs from the Treasury Department. This development is problematic because the Baby Boom Generation is approaching geezer-hood and Treasury doesn't have the cash to cover its chits.
The average Social Security benefit is about $1,200 a month. A cruise missile costs $1.4 million. So, 1 cruise missile = approx. 97 years of retirement payments. We opened the Libyan offensive by firing 112 of these things at various targets in North Africa, thus immolating some 10,864 years of boomer benefits.
Obviously, Congress needs to start thinking outside the box about how to assist boomers in their golden years without worsening the deficit. Below are three innovative suggestions:
The Needy Progeny Protection Program
Modeled after the attorney general's "No-Call List," this service would block calls to boomers from adult offspring who wish to report auto accidents, relationship problems, unplanned pregnancies, appliance failures, emergency veterinary expenses and other unforeseen mishaps that may necessitate a substantial outlay of cash in the form of a forgivable -- and soon forgotten -- loan.
Upon dialing a protected number, callers would receive a cordial message advising that the subscriber has already devoted his peak earning years to working two jobs to send them through college and now hopes to spend whatever days he may have remaining in a dimly lit cocktail lounge where the waitresses wear fishnet stockings (the message can be personalized).
The recording would conclude by informing callers that the subscriber looks forward to seeing them at Thanksgiving, followed by a medley of elevator music.
Love Goggles
As did Ponce de Leon before them, members of the Pepsi Generation are now discovering that the Fountain of Youth is frustratingly elusive. Jane Fonda workout regimes, elixirs, vitamins, herbal enemas and anti-wrinkle emollients can only delay the inevitable for so long. By the time you hit your 60s, you just don't look like you used to. Neither does your significant other.
Government-issued computerized projection lens could remove this hurdle to romance. These devices -- nicknamed "love goggles" -- would be fashioned after the glasses that dimwits presently don to watch their 3-D televisions and would be programmable to transform whomever the wearer looks at into a holograph of his or her favorite sex symbol.
Though start-up costs could be considerable, the program would ultimately pay for itself by reducing the divorce rate and giving oldsters a harmless recreational activity to enjoy at home, thus keeping them off the roadways where they can do real damage.
Home Conversion Kits
The disastrous earthquake in Japan has dealt the nuclear industry a crippling blow. As recently as last month, proponents had been touting nuclear power as the forgotten "green" alternative to carbon fuels. Now, the Fukushima catastrophe has critics once again questioning the wisdom of splitting atoms to make steam.
The problem, of course, is that there's no place to store the spent fuel rods. Though no longer suitable for fission reactions, these rods are still so hot that they must be submerged in continually circulating water for 8 to 10 years before they cool sufficiently to be transported. But transported where?
After spending billions to prepare the site, the government has abandoned the Yucca Mountain storage facility because of complaints from the short-sighted residents of nearby Las Vegas who failed to appreciate the tourist attraction that a glowing desert might generate. These things need to be buried for centuries for their radioactivity to dissipate and we're no closer to having a reliable disposal location today than we were in 1942 when the first reactor was developed.
Bad news for the friendly atom crowd can spell good news for cash-strapped boomers. Let's face it: you're in over your head on the mortgage. Before the bubble burst, you treated your house like an ATM, refinancing every couple years and "cashing out" all that imaginary equity you'd accumulated. Now, you owe more on the dump than you paid for it and far more than it's worth. Why not convert it into a literal dump -- a nuclear one, at that?
The government could take the $96 billion it had earmarked for the Yucca project and divide it among homeowners who are willing to man up and shoulder their share of the burden. Sure, there's probably some long-term health risks associated with living above a radioactive basement but, if you're a boomer, it's already too late to die young. How long is your remaining term anyway? Besides, that uranium-plutonium stockpile in the cellar should really lower next winter's heating bills.
The program might be publicized with a catchy motto. Something like, "Your mortgage may be underwater, and that's just where we want the fuel rods!"
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These are just some of the programs a creative Congress might come up with. Should our elected representatives find my ideas too radical, they could at least acknowledge fiscal reality by making April 1 a national holiday...
M.W. Guzy is a retired St. Louis cop who currently works for the city Sheriff's Department. His column appears weekly in the Beacon.