Every time I think about how frugally my mom and dad raised my sister and me I have to smile. We were not poor, just at the lower edges of middle class. We still had plenty to eat, good, hand made clothes, and a house with 1 bathroom, and we are better for it as adults. We learned a lot about sharing, and time management, and excellent work ethic.
It would seem that those in government were not so well brought up. Evidently, wasteful and out of control spending will continue.
From the Wastebook by Sen. Tom Coburn: $17,000 for each drip pan on the Blackhawk helicopters, or $1.5 million to develop a new kind of beef jerky by the Naval researchers.
No one wrangles over those prices anymore... that must be pocket change. Who cares that each drip pan would be a more than a year's salary for someone on minimum wages. I have hounded my senator and representatives and I know they underscore this crucial time of either cut spending or drown in debt in Washington. Have you called, written, emailed?
I do not understand why tax hikes are expected to jump start the economy through stimulus spending. Economic growth doesn't work that way. That is one of the basics learned in freshman economics.
Most people in Washington have not taken Economics 101, take for instance Maxine Waters' dire prediction per Jay Leno:
“As you know, Congress did not reach an agreement,” he continued, “and
Congresswoman Maxine Waters said today that 170 million jobs could be
lost because of it.”
“Now, there are only 155 million workers in America,” Leno explained, “yet, she says we'll lose 170 million jobs."
"Beginning to understand why we're in this situation in the first place
now?" he asked. "Is it starting to become clear why everything isn't
quite well?”
The point is, something has to be done. On the other hand, maybe if we sit like lumps the situation will heal itself. But then that's what we have been doing. How's it working for us? The Sequester. Obama is blaming the GOP for the sequester when actually it was his own idea.
Apparently, Bob Woodward's book The Price of Politics shows the progression that led up to the sequestration agreement:
Short version:
The White House proposed the idea of a compulsory trigger, with
Sperling calling it an “automatic sequester,” though initially it was to
include tax revenue, not just spending cuts. Boehner was “nervous”
about using it as a budget tool. Glenn Kessler of the
Washington Post
They would design it so that half the threatened cuts would be from the
Defense Department….The idea was to make all of the threatened cuts so
unthinkable and onerous that the supercommittee [tasked with making
additional cuts] would do its work and come up with its own deficit
reduction plan. (p. 326)
This was written back in October, 2012. Did anyone truly understand the ramifications of this? Certainly not our President. He has been trying to lay this egg in Republican laps, prompting Woodward to again review all the interviews and tapes and notes. Nope, the idea came from the White House, sold to Harry Reid, and then presented to the Republicans and then it was passed into law. The kicker -- what the whole thing leaned upon -- was that no one would want to cut defense budget by 13% so therefore action would be taken and the world would be set right. Not.
No comments:
Post a Comment