The Law of the Sea Treaty would drastically undermine American sovereignty, giving massive powers to the U.N. (aka the Dictators’ Club of New York), but the Senate is actually considering passing it — get this — as a tribute to Dick Lugar, whose voters unceremoniously dumped him last week. Seriously, couldn’t they just give him a medal? This is enough to make me think the House of Lords is a good idea.

In any event, Let Freedom Ring has an action site up on this – Let’s Lose LOST.

For further background, here are two studies from CEI on the subject of LOST that we issued when the George W. Bush administration was thinking about getting it ratified to curry international favor.

The Cato Institute has identified $17-20 billion in readily-achievable savings to the 2013 military budget. Such cuts can help stave off tax increases. As Cato’s Christopher Preble notes, if no other action to cut the deficit is taken, “the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011″ will require “$110 billion in spending cuts in January 2013 via sequestration, half of which need to come from DoD.” Such spending cuts are a long overdue first step towards getting America’s skyrocketing budget deficit under control. The deficit is now so huge that America racked up more debt in just one month of 2010 than it did in an entire year in 2007. The national debt rose more in Obama’s first three years in office than all of Bush’s eight years.

But unfortunately, “neither the White House nor Congress” wants the automatic budget cuts through sequestration “to occur; both sides hope to amend the law and achieve equal deficit reductions by other means. . .Republicans want to cut other spending, Democrats to raise taxes.” Liberal Senators can block many of the cuts in social programs sought by House Republicans to reduce the deficit, leaving tax increases as a possibility if cuts are not made elsewhere, such as to the Pentagon budget. (And a few GOP congressmen like Duncan Hunter, who have close ties to Defense contractors, have said they would prefer tax increases to Pentagon cuts.)

Meanwhile, the White House has sacrificed national security for short-run political gain. Obama administration officials outed an undercover agent to wrongly take credit for his work exposing bomb plots against America, endangering his life. Recently, news reports discussed how an al-Qaeda infiltrator exposed the bomb plots, erroneously claiming he was a “CIA mole.” But it now turns out that the al-Qaeda infiltrator was working for the Brits, not the CIA, and his cover was blown for election year politics: “The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as ‘despicable,’ attributing them to the Obama administration.” Reprehensible acts like this make it more difficult and expensive for the U.S. and its allies to achieve their security goals.

OPINION

FARHAD MANJOO: “What Does Facebook’s $100 Billion IPO Mean for You?”
“When Facebook filed for its initial public offering in February, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a frank letter to potential investors in the firm. ‘Facebook was not originally created to be a company,’ he began. ‘It was built to accomplish a social mission—to make the world more open and connected.’ The founder went on to say that while making money was important to Facebook, raking in cash was not its primary goal. ‘Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.’”

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI and SEN. DAVID VITTER: “Obama’s Mulligan on Keystone XL”
“TransCanada’s decision to reapply for a federal permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline across the U.S.-Canadian border offers President Obama something that rarely comes around – a second chance to do the right thing. When the president rejected TransCanada’s original Keystone XL application – finding a project capable of delivering roughly 1 million barrels of oil a day to American refineries not in the national interest – he threw away a golden opportunity to create jobs and improve America’s energy security.”

TIM CARNEY: “Look Who Favors Corporate Jet Subsidies Now”
“Remember when Obama was railing on about “the tax-break for corporate jets,” during the debt-ceiling fights of 2011? He repeatedly invoked this “tax break,” which was really about how some corporate jets were depreciated over five years instead of seven. The message was clear: Republicans are in bed with corporate-jet owners. His loyal legions on the Left joined the chant. But today, Obama’s export-subsidy chief promised a billion dollars in taxpayer-backed subsidies for corporate jets, according to Bloomberg News.”

NEWS

FINANCE - F.B.I. Inquiry Adds to JPMorgan’s Woes
“Investors and federal investigators turned up the heat on JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday, as shareholders called for pay givebacks from executives responsible for a stunning $2 billion trading loss and the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a preliminary review of the debacle.”

ENVIRONMENT – WWF Says Overconsumption Threatens Planet
“In its latest survey of the Earth’s health, WWF named Qatar as the country with the largest ecological footprint, followed by its Middle Eastern neighbours Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Denmark and the United States made up the remaining top five, calculated by comparing the renewable resources consumed against the earth’sregenerative capacity.”

SPECTRUM - FCC to Verizon: What’s Wrong With That Spectrum You Never Built Out?
“The Federal Communications Commission wants Verizon Wireless to explain why it never deployed cellular services in spectrum that it acquired four years ago and is now trying to sell off in order to get a better chunk of spectrum for its 4G-LTE network.”

In yet another victory for workers and job creators, a federal district court has struck down the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) ambush election rule. The ruling is the latest in a series of cases where the courts have overturned the NLRB. This time U.S. District Judge James Boasberg threw out the NLRB’s rule because the board rushed through the rule without the requisite three member quorum.

The Hill reports:

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg struck the regulation down, saying the labor board only had two members when it voted on the final rule in December 2011. Boasberg said the agency needed at least three members to have a quorum for action on the rule.

“According to Woody Allen, 80 percent of life is just showing up. When it comes to satisfying a quorum requirement, though, showing up is even more important than that. Indeed, it is the only thing that matters — even when the quorum is constituted electronically. In this case, because no quorum ever existed for the pivotal vote in question, the Court must hold that the challenged rule is invalid,” Boasberg wrote.

In February I detailed how the rule favored unions in a Washington Times op-ed coauthored with Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA)

Imagine a presidential election in which one candidate may campaign for a year and the other is told he is running only one week before Election Day, blindsiding him. There is no time to organize a team or respond to attacks. The candidate is left scrambling, unable to effectively use resources he may have at his disposal.

This is similar to what the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is attempting to impose on America’s job creators and workers. In December, the board published a regulation that would allow “ambush” or “quickie” elections when unions try to organize new employees.

The ambush election rule allows union bosses to spring elections on employers and workers before either has a fair chance to learn their rights. Job creators are left with little time to explain their views to employees. The new rule reduces the time between filing a petition for unionization and the subsequent election from around 42 days to as few as 10 days.

The shortened period will mean that an employer will have only about 10 days to respond to an organizing drive, including hiring a lawyer and making his case to employees about what unionization will mean for the company. Workers will get only one side of the story – the union’s. During typical union organizing drives, a union can campaign for months or even more than a year, quietly telling employees its side of what unionization could do for them. In many cases, employers only learn of the organizing effort when the union files for an election with the NLRB.

The ambush election rule will hit small businesses especially hard. Small businesses do not have the legal or human-resources infrastructure that large corporations have, nor are they equipped to navigate the burdensome legal regulations imposed by the NLRB in such a short time. This is especially harmful as our country attempts to pull itself from recession.

Unfortunately, the ruling was on procedural grounds and the NLRB could still issue a new rule that would expedite the election process. If they have enough members….

There still may be quorum problems at the NLRB. In January, President Obama “recess appointed“ three members to the NLRB while the Senate was still in recess. If the appointments are deemed invalid the number of members on the NLRB fall back to two meaning once again there is no quorum. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, several senators, and others have filed suit against the NLRB saying the appointments were  invalid.

The latest edition of my colleague Wayne Crews’s annual snapshot of the regulatory state, “Ten Thousand Commandments,” is out. This year’s lowlights include:

• Estimated regulatory costs, while “off budget,” are equivalent to over 48 percent of the level of federal spending itself.
• The 2011 Federal Register finished at 81,247 pages, just shy of 2010’s all-time record-high 81,405 pages.
• Regulatory compliance costs dwarf corporate-income taxes of $198 billion, and exceed individual income taxes and even pre-tax corporate profits.
• Agencies issued 3,807 final rules in 2011, a 6.5 percent increase over 3,573 in 2010.
• Of the 4,128 regulations in the works at year-end 2011, 212 were “economically significant,” meaning they generally wield at least $100 million in economic impact.
• 822 of those 4,128 regulations in the works would affect small businesses.
• The total number of economically significant rules finalized in 2011 was 79, down slightly from 2010 but up 92.7 percent over five years, and 108 percent over ten years.
• Recent costly federal agency initiatives include the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Rule and the Department of Transportation’s Fuel Economy Standards.
• While some people talk about Republican tentacles, this report clearly shows how vast the Leviathan of the federal government has grown, with its massive tentacles extending into every business — and every pocket — in the nation.

Direct link to the PDF is here.

Obamacare will drive up costs for most patients and insurance policyholders. Yet “health-insurance companies must tell customers who get a premium rebate this summer that the check is the result of the Obama administration’s health-care law, according to federal guidelines released Friday. . . .Rules finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday instruct insurers to notify recipients of rebates in the first paragraph of the mailing by writing: ‘This letter is to inform you that you will receive a rebate of a portion of your health insurance premiums. This rebate is required by the Affordable Care Act-the health reform law.’” Never mind that Obamacare has already caused sizeable hikes in insurance premiums for some policyholders.

Earlier, HHS Secretary Sebelius warned insurers not to inform policyholders that their premiums were rising due to Obamacare, even though that was the truth. Obama’s HHS secretary sought to gag insurers that disclosed how Obamacare’s mandates are increasing the cost of health insurance, even though such speech is clearly protected by the First Amendment, telling them if they did so, they could be excluded from health insurance exchanges. Prior to that, the Obama administration attempted to gag insurers from disclosing how Obamacare harms Medicare Advantage participants, drawing criticism from First Amendment experts like UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, the author of two First Amendment textbooks.

Forcing companies to make politicized disclosures to customers implicates the First Amendment, as does interfering with the content of their speech to customers in billings. In International Dairy Foods v. Amestoy, 92 F.3d 67 (2d Cir. 1996), an appeals court struck down a Vermont law that required labeling for milk derived from animals treated with bovine growth hormones, where the labeling could not be justified on consumer deception or public health grounds.

 Similarly, in Bellsouth v. Farris, a federal appeals court struck down a Kentucky statute banning phone companies from listing on their phone bills a line-item charge breaking out the cost of a new state tax, even though it was technically the phone company, not the customer, that was liable for the tax, since the company argued that the tax increased the cost it ultimately charged the customer. The court held that the provision was unconstitutional even if its purpose was to avoid consumer confusion as to who bore legal responsibility for tax, since the company’s speech did not concern unlawful activity, the state’s ban did not apply to any other means of communication, and the state permitted same separate statements on other industries’ bills.  The same seems to be true of HHS’s regulation, which singles out a particular industry and particular means of communication for restrictions. (The First Amendment protects not only the freedom of speech, but freedom from compelled speech as well.)

The Supreme Court has said the First Amendment protects the free speech rights of businesses, even when they are government contractors, in cases like Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr, 518 U.S. 668 (1996).  The First Amendment applies with greater force, however, when the speech restriction is imposed through a regulation, rather than tied to a discretionary government contract.  See, e.g., CarePartners, LLC v. Lashway, 545 F.3d 867, 872 (9th Cir. 2008).

Constellation, the Bush administration’s plan to return to the moon, was canceled a couple years ago. But not all of Constellation was canceled. The Orion crew module, designed to go to lunar orbit and back, survives, with plans to test fly on a Delta IV rocket in a couple years, and Congress, eager to preserve the Space Shuttle jobs base, demanded that NASA reinstitute a new heavy-lift launch vehicle to replace the canceled Ares V with the Space Launch System. So at this point, despite the cancellation, Constellation continues to waste money, except for the Ares I, the new crew rocket that NASA was developing. Derived from Space Shuttle and Apollo hardware, it used a new five-segment version of a shuttle solid rocket booster (SRB) as a first stage, with a new LOX/hydrogen upper stage. At the time of cancellation, it had been experiencing development issues, missing performance, cost and schedule milestones.

Now it looks like even it could be resurrected.

Last February, ATK, the manufacturer of the SRBs, made a joint announcement with Astrium, the company that builds the European Ariane V rocket, that they were proposing a new rocket, renamed Liberty, similar to Ares 1, except that instead of developing a new upper stage, it would use the Ariane first-stage core as a second stage atop the SRB. The idea was that with two proven existing stages, the development cost would be low and the schedule rapid, with a first flight planned for 2015. There’s sense of deja vu here — the Ares 1 was advertised as “Safe, Simple, Soon.” Here’s the old web site, courtesy of the Wayback Machine. Many were skeptical at the time, both in terms of how much sense it made technically, and whether or not there was a business case for it. The team received no funding from NASA, but it signed a Space Act Agreement with the agency last fall to do studies on such a system for the commercial crew program with its own funds.

On Wednesday, the results of its study were announced at a space technology conference in Los Angeles. It was no longer just a proposed new rocket looking for payloads and funding, but a full new commercial venture with several team members to provide launch services for crew and cargo, including a new crew capsule, and new escape system that has already been partially tested by NASA and ATK at the Wallops launch range in Virginia.

How does it differ from Ares 1 (and its Orion capsule)?

As was announced last year, the first stage seems to be exactly the same — it will be the five-segment SRB that was expanded from the original four-segment version that the Shuttle used in order to lift an upper stage that had grown from the original Ares 1 upper-stage concept when NASA switched from the higher performance but more costly Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) to a new, cheaper engine called the J2-X (it is derived from the venerable J-2 design used on the upper stage of the Saturn V for Apollo). This SRB is the same booster type that is planned to be used for the Space Launch System, scheduled to debut in its Block 1 (70 metric ton) version in 2017 (it will use two of them). But unlike the new second stage for Ares, the second stage of Liberty is an almost-off-the-shelf Ariane V core (the Ariane V launcher utilizes strap-on solid rocket motors to augment its lift-off thrust). Ariane V was designed from the beginning to carry humans, because one of its planned payloads was the proposed French Hermes space plane, which was later cancelled. It is a LOX/hydrogen stage using a single Vulcain engine of about 300,000 lbf of thrust, which gimbals for pitch and yaw control. Roll control is provided by cold-gas helium thrusters on the periphery of the stage, and presumably, as an upper stage, this system will provide that function for the entire vehicle until first-stage separation, as the SRB itself has no intrinsic roll control (the Shuttle controlled roll by gimballing the nozzles on the two SRBs attached to its external tank).

One issue that must be dealt with is the fact that as a first stage, the Vulcain engine starts before liftoff, whereas as an upper stage, it will have to be “air started” after separating from the SRB first stage. One of the reasons that the SSME was abandoned by NASA for the J2-X was because, as a very complex staged-combustion engine, it required ground-support equipment on the pad to bring it up to thrust, and there would have been difficulties with an air start. Snecma, the manufacturer of the simpler gas-generator Vulcain, believes that it can incorporate any systems needed into the vehicle to allow it to ignite post separation.

ATK claims that thrust oscillation, a major development issue for the Ares 1, is mitigated by the new configuration, because the Arian stage has different inertial characteristics, and won’t resonantly “couple” with the five-segment solid vibrations the way the Ares 1 upper stage did (there were concerns for that vehicle that the shaking could make it difficult for the crew to see gauges or operate controls, and might even injure them and damage the upper stage and capsule). However, there remains at least one area of uncertainty. The five-segment version of the SRB has never flown. It has been statically fired on a horizontal test stand, but there is no direct data of what its vibration and dynamic characteristics will be in free flight. However, in response to my question about it, ATK claims that the combination of the static test firing and the test flight of the Ares 1-X vehicle a couple years ago, which flew a four-segment version with a “dummy” fifth segment for testing aerodynamics, allowed them to calibrate their models and give them confidence that their simulations will be valid in a five-segment vehicle.

But the biggest announcement yesterday was the new crew capsule and the abort system.

The capsule will be similar to Orion, except that it will utilize a composite structure, rather than metal, and it will have a less robust heat shield, because it is designed to come back only from low earth orbit, and not from deep space, which would require dissipation of twice the energy during entry.

For abort, Ares/Orion used a traditional launch tower on top of the capsule with solid rockets (called a “tractor” configuration) that would rapidly pull the capsule away from the vehicle in the event of a problem. The tower would be jettisoned once safely past any need for an abort to improve payload performance. The ATK capsule uses a boost protection shield on top of the capsule, with side-mounted solid motors for escape, which reduces total height of the stacked launch system (ceiling clearances in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center were an issue for the Ares 1 with its tower). It would also be jettisoned at a safe altitude.

The total vehicle would be stacked in the VAB and moved to the Shuttle launch pad 39-B using a mobile launch platform (the Saturn/Shuttle MLP is currently being modified for the Space Launch System, so it’s not clear if they’ll be able to use it, or have to build their own). Kent Rominger, the Vice President of Business Development for ATK (and former Chief of the NASA Astronaut Office), who led the press conference, said that they were looking for government satellite markets. But there was no discussion of what pads they might use at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the west-coast launch site needed to get to high-inclination orbits where many remote-sensing, weather and spy satellites reside.

The emphasis of the sales pitch for the program was clearly crew safety, with claims of only a 1 in 1200 chance of loss of crew, due to the supposed intrinsic reliability of both the SRB and Ariane, in combination with the abort system. This will be a key issue, because the team admits that they won’t be able to beat SpaceX’s stated price of $20M per seat for a Dragon ride, though Rominger did tell me that they’ll beat the Russian’s price of $62M. Beyond that, he was unwilling to stipulate a price, for what he said were competitive reasons. However, if it carries seven crew (as is planned for the other Commercial Crew competitors) that would put an upper limit of $400M per flight in their cost for them to make any profit at all. How much less than that they’ll be able to charge for satellite launch will determine whether or not they are competitive against the Atlas, Delta and Falcon. It is also unclear what would happen to their costs were the Space Launch System to be canceled, and they would have to carry the full overhead of SRB manufacturing facilities on their own rather than splitting them with the other program.

Which brings us to the politics.

While Liberty now has a full-fledged business plan and proposal for a commercial system, one thing that hasn’t changed since the initial announcement last year is that it’s still looking for money. Rominger said that with proper funding, they could fly by 2015, but left to their own discretionary resources, it might not happen until the next decade. So much will depend on how much money Congress gives NASA for the commercial crew program, and how favorably the agency looks upon the new proposal, relative to the existing competitors of Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin.

This past week, some congressional Republicans have been acting like socialists (as they seem prone to do when it comes to space), demanding that NASA not continue the competition, but instead narrow down to a single contractor next year, despite the fact that NASA says that this would double the program costs and delay it.

The question is, if NASA were to go to a single contractor now, who would it be, and does Congress have a preference? Awarding a new contract to ATK would be a completion of the restoration of the costly and unsustainable Constellation program. Unfortunately, the people in Congress who supported that program, and were angry when it was canceled, are less concerned with cost or progress than they are with the jobs provided in their districts and states, and they’d be very happy to see such a restoration happen. They would argue (with talking points provided by ATK) that Liberty has synergy with the Space Launch System, that it will be the safest solution, and that it promotes foreign cooperation. And unfortunately, I heard last week from a fairly highly placed government employee in a position to know that the timing of Wednesday’s announcement was no coincidence. So stay tuned.

I’ve written extensively about federal surface transportation reauthorization, which is currently pending in conference. CEI, along with The Independent Institute and Reason Foundation, will be holding a Capitol Hill briefing tomorrow at noon titled, “Reforming Federal Surface Transportation Policy: Problems, Solutions, And A New Path Forward.”

The Highway Trust Fund is facing imminent insolvency. This is the result of keeping federal fuel excise tax rates at the same level since 1993. Since then, inflation has eroded about one-third of those dollars’ buying power. Rather than attempt to fix this very serious problem, the Senate’s Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) merely kicks the can down the road. We find this unacceptable.

In addition, MAP-21 — which is more accurately described as a 15-month extension relying on 10 years of revenue — contains some very undesirable provisions. It mandates the installation of electronic onboard recorders for commercial motor vehicles, something the independent trucking industry expects will cost $2 billion. Now is certainly not the time to saddle our nation’s small businessmen with additional, unnecessary regulatory burdens.

Non-germane policy changes include the RESTORE Act, which includes a seven-year reauthorization of the Department of Interior’s Land and Water Conservation Fund (Sec. 1701) — a land-grab tool used by environmentalists. In total, MAP-21 contains $6.8 billion in new non-highway program spending.

It also contains a particularly loathsome amendment offered by Senator Jeff Bingaman that attacks the public-private partnership (P3) model. Even some self-described fiscal conservatives are siding with Bingaman, relying on farcical misinformation that argues that P3s somehow constitute double-taxation. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, these P3s are friendly to taxpayers in that they reduce public costs and the risk associated with construction (cost overruns) and financing — while bolstering state treasuries in the short-run. If you have not read it already, I highly recommend Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ excellent rebuttal to Sen. Bingaman’s falsehoods and distortions in The Washington Post.

One of the main advantages of P3s is that it allows the private partners to shed costly Big Labor project labor agreements and prevailing wage standards that routinely increase the cost of construction by over 10 percent. This is why the most consistent enemy of private sector provision of highway facilities is the labor movement, particularly those unions that represent overpaid government workers. Fiscal conservatives who have been duped by Bingaman and Company need to recognize that rather than benefiting taxpayers, restricting the deployment of P3s will benefit only one major constituency: Big Labor.

We have reached a point where burying our heads in the sand is no longer a viable option.

Much of the Interstate system is nearly 50 years old, which means in the near future that these segments will need to be completely reconstructed from the roadbed up. So the question is not if we reconstruct the system; rather, it is who pays for this construction.

The politics of transportation — at least on the federal level — are broken. We need new solutions that preserve the user-pays/user-benefits principle while harnessing new technologies and approaches to facilities construction, management, and financing. We simply cannot continue with the status quo.

With the prospects for a Greek pro-austerity coalition fading rapidly, here is a round-up of the most useful stories on the Greek tragedy:

• The BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, asks if the Euro could survive a Greek exit. His comments on German reactions are key.
• A group of economists and financiers comment on what a Greek exit would mean. The consensus: economic disaster for Greece, but only a couple note that the Greek position right now isn’t exactly bread and roses.
• A useful note from JP Morgan that suggests that immediate losses from a Greek Euro exit could be around $400 billion.
• The suggestion that Greece could run out of money as early as tomorrow.
• In a leading indicator of capital flight, Greeks, Italians. and Spaniards have flooded into the London real estate market.
• Trading desks in London have started adding a shadow Drachma to their computer systems (and lots more in that excellent rolling blog from The Guardian).
• Drafts from Berlin suggest that Germany wants a Europe-wide bailout fund to stabilize the European economy after a Greek exit (now being elided to “Grexit” in City of London shorthand). This would mean non-Eurozone members helping pay for the costs of the Euro.
• Paul Krugman finally catches up to what the rest of us have been saying for some time.
• A straw that some are clutching at is that Greeks remain committed to the Euro, ignoring the role that it has played in their crisis.
• AEI’s James Pethokoukis points out the obvious — that a Euro recession could have significant implications for the presidential election.

For the record, here’s my two American Spectator articles on Greece, one from November last year. I wish I’d been more wrong.

America — the world’s most recent great civilization — faces a demographic problem that calls for a solution from the dawn of civilization. When civilization began in ancient Sumer over 6,000 years ago, city life increased trade and wealth, but also created the perfect environment for diseases to spread. Epidemics wiped out much of the working age population, but help soon arrived. Akkadians from neighboring rural areas traveled to the Tigris and Euphrates river basin to build Sumer’s irrigation canals, roads, and other infrastructure. The first great civilization survived, not by social isolation, but thanks to a constant supply of migrant workers.

Unlike Sumer, America has so thoroughly subdued disease and prolonged death that it has produced the opposite demographic situation — an aging population supported by a shrinking workforce. America’s over-65 demographic grew three and a half times faster than the general population during the 20th century. By 2050, it will have increased from 13 percent — a historic high — to over 20 percent, according to the Census Bureau. Meanwhile, America’s fertility rate has fallen from 3.7 births per woman in 1960 to barely replacement levels at 2.05.

All this adds up to fewer workers to pay for more retirees’ public benefits. Workers per Social Security beneficiary have fallen from 42 in 1945 to under three, and it’s only going to get worse. By 2050, there will be down just two workers. According to Social Security and Medicare Trustees, the unfunded liabilities for these programs exceed $18.7 trillion over the current generation’s lifespan plus $24.4 trillion from general revenues for Medicare Parts B and D.

Fewer workers will also mean less production, which equals less economic growth and innovation. As the European Commission has concluded, “ageing populations over the coming decades at the global level will [cause] not only a slowdown in the growth rate of output and living standards but also… falling rates of capital accumulation and a slowdown in productivity growth.” This slowdown means growing public services will rest on a shrinking tax base.

Demographic disaster has already hit the euro zone. Greece and Italy’s rapidly declining populations cut economic growth and exploded pension costs fueling their debt crises. If there is salvation for America from similar demographic doom, it will be the same as Sumer’s — immigration. According to the Pew Research Center, U.S. immigrants, their children, and grandchildren will account for 82 percent of the U.S. population increase between 2005 and 2050, about 117 million people. This is good, but insufficient according to the United Nations. The U.N. estimates the U.S. will need 592.6 million new foreign workers from 2000 to 2050 to maintain 2000’s ratio between the elderly and the working-age population.

Immigrants are good for government budgets — like people more generally are good for government budgets. Without people, there is no budget. Shutting the borders and deporting the millions of immigrants already here won’t create fiscal health. The cure for too few workers isn’t mass deportation — it’s the opposite. Without new workers, ever greater percentages of American incomes will be devoted to transfers to the elderly. Taxes would need to increase 81 percent on every American taxpayer to continue current benefits indefinitely, based on the Medicare and Social Security Trustee reports. This is, of course, impossible. The solution isn’t higher taxes — it’s more taxpayers.

Immigration can stabilize America’s fiscal situation and do it at almost no cost to taxpayers. Public benefit programs must be reformed or abolished to keep government from bankruptcy, but as the UN concluded for Europe, “only international migration could be instrumental in addressing population decline and population aging in the short to medium term.” Not only is immigration not bankrupting America, it is the only thing that can save us.

At CEI’s Congressional Immigration Solutions Conference on May 1, I spoke on this topic (video here).