Fiddling Around with Debt Limits
Right now Congress is fiddling around with debt limits. If the people there worked for me, I would fire them. The debt limit fighting is dilatory, wasteful and doesn’t move them toward dealing with the real problem.
The real issue is unchecked and out of control Federal spending. Don’t they realize that every budget that is enacted with a deficit needs increased debt to cover the spending excesses; and that every spending bill that is a direct result of the deficit budget also needs debt to be increased to cover it? There is another way to keep debt from growing and that is to increase taxes. However, it is virtually impossible to increase taxes enough to cover the shortfall between income and spending, but yet, that is always presented as a cure and fix by some of our elected representatives. A third way is to sell assets to raise cash – maybe the IRS Building or the Smithsonian in Washington can be sold and leased back? And perhaps a fourth way is to “print” money but that might have some unintended consequences making us much worse off.
We are in a period of war, stagnant unemployment, home value erosion and financial instability, grave threats to our security, and with critical social issues that are need to be faced, and our elected officials – all of them – Democrats and Republicans - are fighting a meaningless battle in the belief they can either score points with their constituents or do some good. I sure hope they don’t think this is the way to deal with the spending problem because that makes me think they are either stupid or totally misinformed. If they aren’t that, then they have to think their constituents are. If so, what does that tell you about them? Fire them!
I would like to suggest a method to start with – stop fighting meaningless battles and use that energy to come up with some realistic and workable ways to reduce the out of control spending, and then vote that way. Moreover they don’t need a “committee meeting” to start acting fiscally responsible – that can start now! And if they don’t, they should be fired!