President Obama has begun to sweat bullets over the prospect that there will actually be drastic budget cuts that he can do nothing to stop. Worry over the whole thing led him to huddle in Florida last weekend with his top budget strategist, Tiger Woods. Despite all of their best efforts however, they were unable to come up with a plan to avoid these draconian cuts. Of course, these cuts are not drastic, and in fact, they aren’t really cuts, but even the prospect of a cut in the rate of growth in spending is enough to send the man into a tizzy.
The current debate surrounding the pending sequestration, or automatic budget cuts, is clear evidence that our federal government has become dysfunctional and incompetent. This process was called for and signed into law by President Obama, and made necessary by his inability to lead his own party through the normal budgetary process even once during his presidency. Although he is making a lot of noise about the dire consequences of the coming cuts, it is his insistence on more tax increases that has brought us to this point.
The President would have us believe that we are yet again on the brink of financial disaster and that the whole economy will collapse if we allow across the board budget cuts of $85 billion. Current federal spending is at about $3.8 trillion, so the cuts would amount to less than a 3 percent reduction in spending. Of course, these are not real cuts; they are in reality cuts in the rate of increase in spending, so no federal agency will receive less money to operate on than it did last year.
I see this sequestration as a complete failure by our elected leaders, and I believe it is the wrong way to cut the budget. That being said however, bad cuts are better than no cuts at all. If this is the only way they can happen, then bring it on. Naturally there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but a little teeth gnashing in Washington is long overdue anyway.
Will this happen? Probably not; our elected officials are quite adept at kicking the can down the road and are almost sure to do so again. At the last minute I am confident they will yet again find a way to shirk their responsibilities and find some way out of it. The can will be kicked, and off we will go to yet another high speed run at yet another fiscal cliff.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
What a Breath of Fresh Air!
Since the founding of this nation, we have sought the best and brightest among us to serve and represent our interests in halls of government. We began with such notable statesmen as George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Ben Franklin, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton. The fact that such an enlightened and capable political team could ever be assembled is miraculous enough, but when you consider that this group of men was drawn from just thirteen colonies with a combined population of approximately 2.5 million people, the extent of that miracle becomes even more clear.
These men were not all of one mind when it came to political ideology, but they all had the goal of doing what they believed would keep us a nation that offered freedom and opportunity. They did not practice the art of political correctness, but they did exhibit political clarity and boldness. They argued and fought over their various points of view, but they also managed to accomplish that which became the envy of the world.
At the time of our nation’s birth, there were certainly plenty of problems to be solved, but the primary focus of our leaders was on the opportunities to be found. Today our government is consumed with solving the incredible problems that we face. When you realize that nearly all of those problems were caused by the very government that seeks to solve them, the likelihood of those solutions ever being found seems very small. Our government, once an example of how a nation should be run, has been reduced to a mob of ineffective and incapable children whose only concern is holding onto their position.
As we watch the embarrassing spectacle of government employees who cannot pass a budget, who fail to lead on every single important issue we face, and who can look a sixteen trillion dollar national debt in the eye and say “we don’t have a spending problem”, we begin to realize that those who we have chosen to serve and represent us in the halls of government are a far cry from being the best and brightest among us.
On February 7th of this year Dr. Benjamin Carson, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, took the podium to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast. What followed was a clear example of the kind of clarity of thought and intellectual honesty that our nation has needed so desperately. Dr. Carson is not a dynamic speaker, but he is a compelling speaker, and he embodies the kind of common sense thinking that once made this nation great, and that will be needed to restore us to what we are capable of being.
Until this speech, I can’t say that I have ever heard of Dr. Carson, and I don’t know that I would agree with every position he might take, but I do know that I can respect his ideas and be assured that his goals are the same as mine.
If you have not already done so watch the video of his speech. Listen to his common sense approach to solving problems and take a deep breath of fresh air. If our country is to recover from the mess we have made of it, men and women of Dr. Carson’s caliber and intellect will be the ones who make it happen.
These men were not all of one mind when it came to political ideology, but they all had the goal of doing what they believed would keep us a nation that offered freedom and opportunity. They did not practice the art of political correctness, but they did exhibit political clarity and boldness. They argued and fought over their various points of view, but they also managed to accomplish that which became the envy of the world.
At the time of our nation’s birth, there were certainly plenty of problems to be solved, but the primary focus of our leaders was on the opportunities to be found. Today our government is consumed with solving the incredible problems that we face. When you realize that nearly all of those problems were caused by the very government that seeks to solve them, the likelihood of those solutions ever being found seems very small. Our government, once an example of how a nation should be run, has been reduced to a mob of ineffective and incapable children whose only concern is holding onto their position.
As we watch the embarrassing spectacle of government employees who cannot pass a budget, who fail to lead on every single important issue we face, and who can look a sixteen trillion dollar national debt in the eye and say “we don’t have a spending problem”, we begin to realize that those who we have chosen to serve and represent us in the halls of government are a far cry from being the best and brightest among us.
On February 7th of this year Dr. Benjamin Carson, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, took the podium to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast. What followed was a clear example of the kind of clarity of thought and intellectual honesty that our nation has needed so desperately. Dr. Carson is not a dynamic speaker, but he is a compelling speaker, and he embodies the kind of common sense thinking that once made this nation great, and that will be needed to restore us to what we are capable of being.
Until this speech, I can’t say that I have ever heard of Dr. Carson, and I don’t know that I would agree with every position he might take, but I do know that I can respect his ideas and be assured that his goals are the same as mine.
If you have not already done so watch the video of his speech. Listen to his common sense approach to solving problems and take a deep breath of fresh air. If our country is to recover from the mess we have made of it, men and women of Dr. Carson’s caliber and intellect will be the ones who make it happen.
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