Rather Than The Difficult Choices

Congress has a Constitutional responsibility to determine and fund the country’s budget. This responsibility was assigned to them specifically because they were thought to most directly represent the people and the people’s interests in the government. Clearly they have done a stellar job in regard. And as we are all witness to, they continue to conduct themselves with the high level of effectiveness that has brought the country to its current state of economic vitality and stability, its well rated public regard and appreciation, and its effective and efficiently managed government bureaucracy. In other words, Congress is proceeding in the same inept, disorganized, partisan driven, and moronic manner that the American people have come to value from the best and brightest.

The budget battle lines are drawn along new contending fronts that divide the old established guard from the new insurgents that have erupted with the tectonic shifts that have introduced new instabilities wrought by the Tea Party. Injecting these new players has substantially improved the ability of Congress to serve the people’s interests notably. It has been generations since we have seen politicians that are as skilled and adept at finding the compromises that enable the Government to fulfill its Constitutional duties. Of course there are a few members of Congress aligned on some particular high-ground of their own making, who are unable to participate in open debate that exchanges ideas and informs both their peers and public alike.

These different groups of like-minded elected sages are often confused by subtle concepts like “compromise”. It appears that the concept of finding a workable agreement that benefits each disparate group is either not understood or defined as losing which is a non-negotiable and unacceptable condition. Their lack of knowledge and appreciation of the significance and central role that being able to compromise had to the creation of our nation, its founding laws, and the advancement of our democratic system is in stark contrast to their ability to prevent progress.

Unfortunately for the country, there are enough of these small groups that in aggregate they represent sufficient numbers to oppose any effort by anyone else to insure, provide, promote and secure our public and private interests.

What we get in exchange for appointing them to the halls of power is partisan bickering about how much to cut from the budget, where the cuts are allowed to come from and where they are not, and the inclusion of social agendas into a budget process because if you can’t get people to accept your point of view let’s be totalitarian about it. It is so inspiring to see a group of people who value only their own views as our founding fathers would have advised them to do.

The budget issue is not just an issue of cutting or spending. In fact, these are not the issue or problems at all. Surely someone in Congress is smart enough to see where the problems are, and could help lead the Congress to a solution that will establish Justice for everyone, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. Instead of deluding not just themselves, but through their actions or more appropriately their inactions and ineptitude missing the moment that America so disparately needs.

Why is knowledge and understanding so unrepresented in Congress, and undesired by the voter?