Cut, cap and balance is just another gimmick those in Congress are using to avoid their constitutional responsibility to address the countrys legitimate fiscal problems. Instead of addressing the politically risky issues of real tax reform, entitlement solvency, military modernization, the countrys crumbling infrastructure and modernization, Congress is squabbling like a bunch of children and attempting to foist off on the country a really dangerous constitutional amendment and economically questionable budget cuts at a time when the economy is still very fragile, mostly because past Congresses and administrations have played this same game for years.
All the responsible people who are doing the real math know that we cannot balance the budget by cutting spending without dismantling Social Security and Medicare that millions of Americans depend on for a decent retirement and which actually contribute billions to our economy every month. Has anyone considered what would happen to our economy if Social Security and Veterans benefit checks did not go out each month? Wal-Mart might just be the first to go bankrupt, and a lot of doctors and hospitals would not be far behind. Every dollar the government spends, be it in Social Security or Veterans payments, military contracts, infrastructure repairs, or any of the other government programs everyone is claiming we do not need, goes to a real person who then has money to spend on groceries, gas, cars, houses, iPods, etc. That spending then creates more jobs in the private sector so that more people can become consumers. What our economy needs is consumers and taxpayers, and we will not get more consumers and taxpayers until we get more jobs. Unemployment is what is causing the deficits and the debt to go up. In order to address this problem, the government needs to spend more, not less.
Our government is being held hostage by a bunch of economic terrorists and ignoramuses who want to destroy the Federal government. They do not want to go back to the Constitution of the Founding Fathers. They want to go back to the Articles of Confederation, which was failing the country in the 18th century. Our Constitution was written for the express purpose of establishing a central government with the authority to levy taxes so that the country could pay its debts. The greatest accomplishment of President George Washington was to establish the full faith and credit to the United States. He and the other Founding Fathers knew that the new nation would not have real credibility and stature in the world unless it had the means and the will to pay taxes so that it could and would pay its debts. Abraham Lincoln knew that the way to create prosperity was to build a national infrastructure (which in those days meant railroads and canals), and he used government resources to back their construction.
We live in a complex society and it takes a lot of government to keep it running so that everyone can have a safe, prosperous, and productive life. Cutting money for the EPA, the FDA, the FAA, the federal courts, and all the other agencies that protect us from our own greed and carelessness endangers everyone of us and it hurts our economy. Cut, cap and balance would shut down or significantly cripple all the agencies and programs that all serve the legitimate needs of our society.
Barbara Lynch lives down McElmo Canyon.
