All the hype about the fiscal cliff has died away. Now we're facing another self-created crisis: sequestration, which is basically the return of the fiscal cliff. We postponed it for a couple of months, but now it's ba-a-ack! Congressional committees haven't been able to agree on how to handle the need to reduce the deficit, so the problem gets kicked further down the road. It reminds me of parents, talling an disobeying child, "Okay, just this once, you can stay up past your bedtime even though you didn't do your homework. But NEXT TIME will be different..."
The trouble is, Congress is both the parent and the child in this scenario (with some members more like children than others). Congress is failing to regulate its own behavior and decision-making process, and no one has the authority to put them in timeout.
What would Thomas Paine say? He was against the creation of paper money at all. He believed that paper money was "at best a bubble" and that the government should use gold and silver as their currency, which would keep it from spending money it didn't have.
Government spending has increased over the years. Democrats appear to value entitlement programs over fiscal responsibility, while Republicans appear to be caught between their desire to cut the deficit and their fear that national defense will suffer. The result is, grown men elected as leaders of our country, paid a healthy salary and receiving Cadillac-level benefits, are refusing to do their job. They can't work out a solution that will combine spending cuts with ongoing funding of high-priority items.
I want babies from low-income families to get the milk they need. I want Grandma to be able to afford her blood pressure medicine. I don't want to leave a crippling debt and punitive tax rate to my children, and I certainly don't want North Korea to kick our butt. Is that too much to ask? For $3.8 trillion, I don't think so.
So, short of requiring both houses of Congress to attend a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University, followed by a Dr. Phil intervention to make their relationship work, how do Democrats and Republicans work together?
They can start by remembering they're on the same team. We all are. Team America. No, not the movie. T.P. said, "Our great title is Americans." It sounds hokey and simplistic to say we're all one country, that we need to remember the "united" in United States, but maybe Congress needs the reminder. So here goes.
Members of Congress, we the people are your boss. You invested a lot of time and money in trying to get the job. Don't whine because it's hard or because you don't like all the other employees. I don't like all my fellow cube farmers. Tough. I do my job, and you need to do yours. In the words of the great American Tim Gunn: make it work. You have experts and textbooks and even this thing called the Internet where a few million kindly souls would be willing to offer their ideas and suggestions, since the only choices you seem to see are gridlock or sequestration. How about a nice, gentle hike down the face of our mountain of debt, guided by a map YOU, CONGRESS, have created?
Sound too difficult? Then quit. Go back to being a lawyer or a millionaire or whatever you did before. Otherwise, as at the next election, we T.P.'ers, who by then will surely be dozens strong, will storm the steps of the Capitol, and in the words of another great* American, shout, "You're FIRED!"
* Term is used for rhetorical purposes only and does not indicate any value judgment applied to Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump's business empire, Mr. Trump's television show, or Mr. Trump's hair.
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