2% Solutions Leave 38% Of The Problem

By Jason Patrick Sager

This morning I woke up to headlines and swooshing sounds on my TV screen to alert me that my Federal government would not be shutting down. Hooray! What on Earth would I do without it?

I listened to pundits and elected officials on both sides of the aisle claim victory over the looming Budget Resolution that needed to be passed in order to keep our Federal government operational through the end of FY 2011. Leading up to the 11th hour we heard our friends on the Federalist side of the aisle claiming that the Republican side wanted to “Kill Women” and attributed their Draconian spending cuts to “Bombing Innocent Civilians”.

None of this was actually true but it did make for great TV and political theater. I thought for sure that our Republican representatives would be so displeased at their opponent’s comments that they would never back down and finally take a stand for something. Wrong again!

How stupid do these Federalist elites think we are? Many of them, now residing in the Republican Party, obviously think that we are quite stupid and that we can’t possibly figure out where Bill Gates hid the calculator function on our computers. Well, they are wrong as usual and we figured it out. So, what did we get in the “Great Compromise of 2011”?

In 2010 the Federalist-Republicans unveiled their “Pledge to America” to the actual republicans that were to elect them. Contained in that pledge was a PROMISE to cut $100 billion dollars from the FY 2011 budget that the Federalists neglected to pass in early 2010.

We initially laughed at the number, but soon realized that we had to start somewhere. We bought it and proceeded to elect them. After several Continuing Resolutions we had come to a time that we had to pro-rate their $100 billion PROMISE down to $61 billion as we only had 6 months to go in our current fiscal year.

We watched this theater and found ourselves cheering for what actually added up to a 3% cut in overall Federal spending. Their illusion was clearly working on us. We forgot all about the 40% that would actually be needed in order to balance the budget for FY 2011. The stage was set and the possibility of shutting down our government loomed at midnight.

As you all are now well aware this shut down did not occur. In the middle of the night the Federalist-Republicans struck a deal with the Federalists and agreed to cut $38.5 billion from our overall spending for FY 2011.

We are being told by them and the media who supports them that we just got a great deal. They are now playing games with calculators and miniature dry erase boards to make their cowardice sound pleasing to all of us whose children will assuredly be paying for the now over $14 trillion in debt that our generation has accumulated for them.

While the political parties are planning their celebratory dinners and our President prepares for yet another well deserved vacation funded by you and I, let’s take a look at reality for a moment.

Our Congress just trimmed $38.5 billion in spending for FY 2011. According to the CBO our projected spending for this year is $3,708,000,000,000 ($3.708 trillion). If you pro-rate this to only account for the remaining 6 months in the fiscal year you come up with $1,854,000,000,000 ($1.854 trillion) that has yet to be spent.

So, our house heroes who stayed up all night working out the deal they fought bravely for and were called horrible names for, managed to win us back $38.5 billion of our own dollars. They managed to trim a whopping 2% of the projected FY 2011 budget. If they stuck to their pro-rated PROMISE of $61 billion it would have been 3%.

The Federalists on both sides of the aisle almost stopped our military men and women from being paid for a total of less than 1% of actual spending cuts. I understand the art of compromise and the need for it. I am not ignorant to “The Game” that is being played between the two warring Federalist factions in our government. But, if I am ever going to take a single Federalist-Republican seriously when he or she says that they are “Fiscally Conservative” they had better start with the $750, 000,000,000 ($750 billion) cut or 40% that would be needed to balance the budget that you are asking the American people and their children to pay for.

You will not get it of course and that is understood. This negotiating tactic is known as, “Pitch the Cadillac, sell the Volkswagen”. Even if they had to meet you half way, it would still be 20% of overall spending. You got 2%. Even if they had to meet you one quarter of the way it would have been 10% of overall spending. You got 2%. Congratulations on pitching the Volkswagen and selling another Clunker though.

With a $14 trillion dollar debt and a shrinking number of foreign nations that are willing to float it for us, we must stop this idiotic political party game that is being played in Washington and in our own towns. The value of our dollar is approaching junk status on the world market and we still have the town criers blaming each other for the problem. The time to blame is over.

The time to get serious and act like the American family that we once used to be is now upon us. Times might get tough for some of us, but our people have survived and then prospered through much worse. The longer that we cheer for 2% solutions to 40% problems, the closer we get to the road to serfdom or worse.

I would however like to thank the 28 Anti-Federalist-Republicans who stood their ground last night. You have proven once again, just as you did when you said “No” to extending the key provisions of the un-Constitutional “Patriot Act”, that you have managed to remove your heads from the Elephant’s posterior. I only wish that my “representative”, Federalist-Republican Richard B. “Rich” Nugent, was standing with you. Instead he stood with Boehner and Wiener.