Where Do We Go From Here?

A news tidbit caught my eye or should I say tugged at the wallet I was sitting on at the time.

The federal deficit is now at 1.2 TRILLION dollars and EACH American, man, woman, child, baby, physically challenged, mentally impaired…every one of us would have to pay $4,100 to pay it back. I don’t know about you but I don’t have that kind of cash lying around for the 4 people in my house.

I am an avid L.A. Angels fan and I watch their games as often as I can. The stadium that they play at holds about 40,000 fans. If that stadium was filled to capacity and had to pay their share they would pay $164,000,000 (one hundred and sixty-four million dollars) just that one stadium for that one game and that is nowhere near what it will take to pay this back.

President Ronald Reagan stated one time in a speech that a trillion dollars (that’s with a CAPITAL “T”) in one hundred dollar bills stacked on top of each other would reach from the earth to the moon. The moon is 240,000 miles from the earth and we all know approximately how thick any currency bill is that we have in our wallet.

Please remember that this deficit is PRIOR to National Healthcare which will only add to the deficit as it currently stands.

My mind is absolutely amazed on how we got here. Little to nothing has been done to repair the infrastructure (roads, bridges, airports (unless you are Congressman John Murtha)) and only 10% of the stimulus has been allocated out for projects that will truly put people to work. Most of the allocation to date has been on pork barrel projects for law makers to spend in their districts but the country as a whole is still standing and waiting for Washington to act.

When this all started I actually cheered the stimulus because I knew that it was going to fund projects to fix our bridges (remember Minneapolis a few years ago?) and I thought man, this is a good idea. People will be hired to go to work to make this happen and the economy will heal faster with this type of plan. Well, Washington and President Obama have let us down again and that is a sad fact.

But don’t forget that Congress agreed to fund new airplanes for them at a cost of $500,000,000 (five hundred million dollars) and we all know how much the Speaker Nancy Pelosi has wanted a bigger plane to ferry her family to California.

Congress, both Republicans and Democrats just don’t get it anymore. There is too much money and too much influence and when they spend the money it is our money, not theirs, there is no emotional attachment to what they are doing to their constituents at home. Our system is broke.

So where do we go from here? Simple, we start replacing all congressional elected personnel with fiscally responsible candidates.

Require that ALL lobbyist to move out of Washington D.C. no closer that 300 miles.
Create a lobbyist arm of the government that they will have to register with and account for all contact of any congressional personnel and limit contact both in Washington and outside the district.
Reduce all congressional salaries 10% immediately and all years that have a deficit no salary increases will be given.

That’s a start. Let me think about it and I probably will come back with more ideas.