Tag Archives: Speaker of the House

Default and disfunction…

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Watching the nightly news or reading the newspaper headlines is something of a lesson in dysfunction. If the two major political parties that have run the country for the last 100 odd years can’t come to grips with the fact that the thought of the US Government defaulting on its debt should be unthinkable, perhaps it’s time to consider the value of having either of those parties around. The men who founded this republic literally risked their lives just by signing a document proclaiming themselves free from Great Britain. Today’s politicians, both Republican and Democrat, are so entrenched in ideology and in playing to their base that they seem willing to let the ship of state sink with all flags flying and their hands around each other’s throat. So much for heroics. So much for for their obligation to the republic they were elected to serve.

I’m not a mathematician, but the formula seems obvious. For the staggering debt this country labors under to come down, spending must decrease and revenue must increase. Yes, some social programs will go away and that will hurt some people. Yes, some taxes will go up and that will hurt some people also. It’s going to be painful for many of us to adjust to a world more austere than then one we think we’re entitled to. It was painful for our grandparents, too, when they went though the “economic adjustment” of the Great Depression, but they emerged from it and worse to be recognized as our greatest generation.

Where are our great leaders today? Where’s our FDR with his Hundred Days? Where’s this generation’s Reagan standing toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union? Where’s our Kennedy calling on men to reach the moon? Where’s our Nixon opening China? Maybe such men don’t even exist anymore. Today’s politicians aren’t fit to carry the water for those giants of the 20th century and shouldn’t be in the same history books with the leaders of our distant past like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

This current crisis doesn’t have to end in catastrophe, but only if the men and women we’ve elected start behaving more like statesmen and less like common street thugs. How optimistic are you?

Grinding to a halt…

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As a fed, I’m following with great interest the ongoing fight to set the government’s spending levels for the rest of 2011. The current Continuing Resolution funding operations runs through March 4th. If it expires, the lights go off for the vast majority of federal offices – Social Security checks stop flowing, veterans benefits stop being paid, inspectors are no longer monitoring the nation’s food supply and we’re in a position where, except in very narrowly defined areas of national security, the legal authority of the government to do business ceases to exist. At that moment, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 million federal employees and a veritable army of contractors instantly join the ranks of the unemployed.

As I remember my high school civics lessons, one of the primary jobs of the Congress is to allocate funds (i.e. pass a operating budget for the year). We’re almost half a year into fiscal 2011 and they haven’t managed to get that done yet. Perhaps instead of grandstanding for benefit of the media, Congress should do its job and, you know, actually do the hard work of passing a budget. Speaker Boehner says if federal jobs are lost as a result of the Legislative Branch’s posturing and pandering, “so be it.” That’s a hell of an attitude for a man only one life removed from being the leader of the people he’s just told to “eat cake.” There are no simple answers to the decades-in-the-making fiscal issues we’re facing and listening to so-called leaders dumbing it down to a one line soundbite insults my intelligence and should insult every American with the sense God gave a goat.

The federal government should and must reduce its operating costs, but this can be done in a sane manner, analyzing the relative value of work performed and making informed decision about what functions, missions, and people add value to the country and which are, by definition, pork. There will be reductions in personnel. There has to be in order to control payroll costs, which are the single biggest expense of any organization. Across the board indiscriminate hacking only makes sense from a position of emotion. I hope calmer and more analytical heads prevail in this national discussion, as the slash-and-burn strategy has always worked out so well in the past. Given the emotionally charged atmosphere both sides have fostered, I’m not optimistic.