My Turn (8-10-11)

My Turn
Mike Scott

Did you follow all the Washington wrangling on raising the national debt limit to avoid yet another economic catastrophe?
How is it that our representatives “cut” 2.4 trillion dollars, and yet the debt will still grow by over 7 trillion over the next 10 years?
That will make the national debt over $21 trillion by 2021.
And while “21 by 21” sounds like a campaign slogan, it sure doesn’t look like we “cut” anything.
It’s kind of like shopping for a new car. The $20,000 Ford would serve your family just fine, but wait, Mercedes has a sale and you can get a $60,000 car for just $50,000. Bingo. You’ve saved $10,000, right?.
Nope, you’ve spent $50,000. What’s worse, you’ve spent $30,000 more than you planned to spend.
But that’s Washington math.
Washington representatives haven’t solved anything with all this drama and show. Once again, they’ve kicked the can further down the road, passing the debt on to many future generations.
Our debt now exceeds the value of our entire economy. In other words, we’re like a homeowner whose house is worth less than their mortgage—our country is officially “underwater.”
I ask you this…if your credit card is maxed out, and you’re threatening not to pay your bill, will VISA just raise your credit limit?
Of course not, but that’s what congress and President Obama just agreed to.
Here’s the simple truth:
If the U.S. Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand.
That statement was emailed to me by a friend, and attributed to financial guru Dave Ramsey. Whether or not it’s accurate, it illustrates the problem.
Folks, our President, Senators and Congressmen are not going to solve this problem, and the reason is startling simple: ?They’re afraid of losing their jobs.
Fixing the problem will involve deep, real, painful spending reductions. Real cuts, not smaller increases that a called cuts to fool the public. Actually spending less next year than this year.
And we’re all going to have to pay more in taxes. You could take all the money “the rich” earn, and it would only run the government less than a month. We’re all in this together, and we all have to be a part of the solution.
So, the only solution I see is for the American public to demand that President Obama, all the members of the House of Representatives, and the one-third of the Senate facing election next year announce they will not seek re-election. In addition, the other two-thirds of the Senate should announce they will resign their positions effective January 20, 2013, which is the next inauguration day. That way, we can elect an entirely new government.
Without the pressures of campaigning for re-election, they will be free to make the tough choices needed to get our country back on the right track.
Deep down, the men and women in Congress are good people, who want what is best for America. At least they did when they first ran for office.
By announcing their collective resignations, they can make choices based on what’s really needed–not what the two major parties want to maintain their power base.
We can’t wait for the next election to start fixing the problem, and even if we could, if most of the same people are re-elected to Washington, do you really think they’d do anything different?
Washington has to change.
So, Mr. President, Senators, and Congressmen, do you love your country enough to give up your jobs? Or is holding on to power more important?