Press editorial: But first, let's pay our debts

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, dismantle Obamacare and boot NAFTA from New York to South America.

Seeing as how he won and will be fortified by Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, there seems little to keep him from his objectives.

Humbly, though, we would ask that another to-do be added to the presidential priority list. It’s a rather big one, as it involves 83 million young adults — the millennials; the people who will one day be sitting where Mr. Trump and every member of Congress now sits.

We need to give them a fighting chance to run a strong America.

We need to clean up our financial act.

Fiscal responsibility has long been a guiding light of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. With Republicans in firm control of American politics for at least the next two years, it is time right now to get our financial house in order.

It’s a mess today and the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of us baby boomers. We’re the citizens most responsible for digging a nearly $20 trillion debt hole to hell, a pit that we’ve given our young adults spoons to fill. Meantime, we continue to spend more than we bring in, so the pit grows deeper and the supply of spoons seems to be running out.

We boomers haven’t stopped there, either.

To make the financial future of our children and grandchildren even more bleak, we’ve eliminated most of the pension plans in America. Well, you say, that’s no problem: We have Social Security to tide them over when they get cranky and creaky like us. But have you looked at the long-range Social Security forecast? Today’s 25-year-olds can absolutely count on Social Security to provide them what they need, just so long as they need little or nothing.

Remember too that what Social Security gives back is based largely upon what one puts in. When one is unemployed or underemployed for long, as many millennials are, the gold in the pot near the end of the line is going to be fool’s gold.

The irony of all this is that those of us who decry socialism are shoving our kids and our grandkids toward a much more socialistic future. Paying off our debts with insufficient-paying jobs and little or no long-term security will leave them only one alternative: To create a society which will take complete care of them in their old age. Millions and millions of them.

What did these kids ever do to deserve us?