published: Friday, February 15, 2013

Budget busting Washington style

After watching the State of the Union speech, I agree with one thing that President Obama said. He said that his proposals would not add one dime to the deficit.

He is right. They are going to add a lot more than one.

I know that the President gives lip service to not growing the government, but his actions speak a lot louder than his words. When he lists a number of things he wants government to do even though there is no budget and we are deeply in the red, you have to ask yourself what he's really thinking.

The Republicans aren't doing much better in this area. They also say all kinds of things about wanting to cut spending, but I don't see the will to do it. It seems that Mitt Romney's loss in November sucked all the fight right out of them, with a couple of exceptions.

County Commissioner Don Elwell said on Facebook recently that if he could he would lock all the senators and representatives in the chambers until they passed a balanced budget. This makes more sense than anything said last night; it's too bad that we can't really do it.

If I sound cynical I admit I am. It hasn't helped that I've spent a good part of the day thinking about this subject, trying to figure out how to turn my ponderings into a coherent column. This is not an uplifting subject to be spending a lot of brainpower on. Thus, I am cranky.

Why is it so hard for our leaders in Washington to grasp certain monetary truths? The president says we can't cut our way to prosperity. Does he really think we'll get there by spending money we don't have? At some point our debts are going to overwhelm us unless we take steps to cut them down.

But our leaders don't seem worried about it. They just raise the debt ceiling, the equivalent to taking out another credit card to pay off the interest on the ones we have. If I did this with my finances, I would be called irresponsible. In Washington it's standard operating procedure.

When are we going to learn that we're going to have to make some tough choices in the short run to prevent a disaster down the line? And the choices get harder the longer we wait to make them.

Don't get me wrong. I think we should pay our debts. And I think there are some legitimate things that the federal government needs to be doing and getting money for. But the bloated monstrosity we currently have in Washington bears little resemblance to the central government our Founding Fathers had in mind when they crafted the Constitution over 200 years ago.

Most of our politicians seem unwilling to face the ugly truth - we can't afford to do everything we are doing. Cuts and changes are going to have to be made at some point, or else we may well go down the same road Greece is traveling. And that is one trip I'd like to skip, thank you very much.

I really wanted this column to be a snarky look at Washington and their version of sticking to a budget. Something that you would read and chuckle over as I poked fun at our leaders and their unthrifty ways.

For some reason the humor of the situation is escaping me this week. Maybe because our leaders seem so deliberately blind to the facts. Or they think we are. But if you see the funny side, drop me a line and let me know. After thinking about this all day, I could use the laugh.