Conceding that talks on a grand budget deal are near failure, Congressional leaders on Sunday pointed fingers at each other as they tried to deflect blame for their inability to figure out a way to lower the federal deficit without having to rely on automated cuts.
The testy exchanges ”” which dominated the Sunday talk shows ”” made clear that leaders in both parties now see the so-called sequester ”” a term meaning an automatic spending cut ”” as the most likely solution to reduce the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years, instead of a negotiated package of spending reductions and tax increases, something they have been unable to achieve over the last 10 weeks.
The ideological disconnects, politicalyy-narrow-my-party-partizanship, the festering wounds-of-the-atacks-on-traditional-American-values-and Costitutional-government, differing visions-of-what-America-is, radical-visions-of-what-must-become(?), etc. have not been resolved by the creation of a “super committee.”
So how “in Sam’s Hill” did the politicians in the House and in the Senate ever believe that they were going to resolve our huge budget deficits with this monstrous (probably unConstitional) super committee?
They simply threw up their hands and said this is too hard for us.
Meanwhile, my prediction is that the core social entitlement problems will not be resolved in any durable or sincere manner and that the super committee legislation will be used to emasculate and severely damage our national defense forces.
And then stand by for huge national security emergencies that we will will not be able to deal with in a timely manner.
America has real enemies that can restrict or deny us energy supplies and other vital raw materials, limit our rights of navigation on the high seas, invade and destroy/severely damage our allies, upset the total economic balance of the world, involve large numbers of Americans (mostly young) in wars that could have been avoided, etc.
Oh, goody! Let us politicians blame it on no one being able to get the job done…then let the chips fall where they may! Yeppers..
That is the perfect solution. Now let’s allow the nation’s military suffer our inability to do anything…then count on them to ….never mind.
How very Greek of them!
More capital for the politics-as-entertainment crowd. Unfortunately, this will only foster yet lower expectations from what passes for our nation’s statesmen. One hopes it does not engender a search for a man on horseback to save us from ourselves. Really, we can do better than this, or that.
Let’s get real. The “sequester” is nothing more than a planed reduction in the rate of spending increase spread out over 10 years. Spending is still going to go up even with so called “sequestration”.
Further future Congresses are not bound by it anyway.
And I don’t blame Congress. The country itself is split. I want spending cuts and a balanced budget. You want more spending for social programs that, a. you think we need and b. will buy you votes.
The Congress reflects where we are. Of course there is the usual number of politicians who are in it for personal gain, but my point is that the Country itself is split and the Congress reflects this split.
“The Congress reflects where we are. Of course there is the usual number of politicians who are in it for personal gain, but my point is that the Country itself is split and the Congress reflects this split.”
Very good point, Brother Michael.
The division within the country can be seen in the county-by-county and state-by-state election results over the past 15 to 20 years or so.
The “blue state-red state” charts showing presidential and Congressional election returns are particularly interesting.
My reading of those charts is that large cities and their suburbs are largely voting Democrat and the traditional Americans in the rest of the country are largely Republicans or Independents.
There are some interesting “purple” areas on those charts that seem to be in ‘a state of flux,’ but my conclusion is that the country has seem to come to a point of ‘diminishing returns’ in its fracture and its increasing polarity and that future election demographics, except for episodic landslide victories, will remain as they are out into the future.
‘Expectations-wise,’ the population of the “red” areas seem to believe in self-sufficiency seizing upon the opportunities that our traditional way of life has given us while the “blue” areas now have an entrenched ‘plantation’ or ‘reservation’ mentality and have become highly dependent on ‘handouts’ from the federal and the state and local governments in order preserve their ‘new’ (50 years old) way of life.