Mac-Coleman

23 December 2011 –

Bumper Sticker of the Day – Regime change and nation building start at home.

The latest in a long line of politically-motivated, government tiffs ended today as the President and Senate succeeded in convincing the House to agree to a bill extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits for two months. The President then exhorted Congress to keep working to extend the cuts through 2012, quickly hopped on Air Force One, and hightailed it to Hawaii for his fourth vacation there since 2008. Congress skeedaddled as well. The giant whoosh everybody heard in Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland were the limos delivering their passengers to National and Dulles airports in time to get home for Christmas. Some people would say that everything is all right with the world now.

But it ain’t all right with the world. In fact, this latest windy Washington harrumphing does NOT deflect the hurricane that will rip through that town if our Congressional leaders do not immediately restructure our national debt and its causes. Today, our national debt is greater than our nation’s gross domestic product. Our government owes more than our society makes every year, with the GDP growth lagging well behind debt growth. I wouldn’t lend money to anybody with that kind of personal debt and undisciplined, irresponsible behavior. What is painfully criminal about our lawmakers and president’s latest fiddling while our fiscal house burns is that cutting payroll taxes actually deepens the abyss the Social Security Trust Fund—trust?—finds itself in. Extending unemployment benefits simply throws more tax purchased bread to the masses, who then use it to supply their own circuses of holiday football games on widescreen TVs and violent video games on their hand held players. And, the bill’s changes to Medicare do nothing to close the other gaping money maw that threatens the fiscal foundation of our country? In fact, the 27.4 percent cut in Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors is not reform, it is making it harder for people to find doctors who will take Medicare patients. Thanks, guys, for the help. It hurts when you don't do your job. It hurts even more when you do.

I guess we shouldn’t expect much from a Senate who hasn’t passed a budget in three years. Three years! Grown adults who act like selfish teenagers have spent the equivalent of their entire high school careers using dad’s credit card to purchase everything, with no guidelines or budgets to restrain wild urges. Of course, the democrat Senate doesn’t like the republican House’s latest budget bills. But, what about when Democrats controlled both houses in 2009/10? Did the Senate fulfill then its constitutionally required duties to pass a budget? Nope! I guess it is easier to spend like a spoiled teenager with high verbal skills than it is to act like a disciplined body of conscientious lawmakers.

We are heading for disaster. This is not hyperbole. We are destroying our nation’s finances. We are heading for disaster. Where are our leaders? The self-styled, pampered emperor is heading for a vacation in Hawaii, and the others are wherever limp, toothless, wimp solons go when they no longer are needed at court. I hope the place is as dark, cold, and lifeless as the Senate is when they are there.