The Disaster Of Party Politics

In light of the looming national debt ceiling debate it appears that America’s elected officials have opted out of any rational approach to tackling the fast approaching debt tsunami!

It seems they have abandoned any level of courage or common sense as we their constituents wait for some semblance of denouement to abort this pending disaster!

There comes a time when politics should take a back seat to doing what’s right for the nation. There is no doubt this is one of those times.

Although it’s true we officially have a two party political system in this country, somehow it doesn’t seem like it. As of last November there is now a sizeable faction of freshman members inside the Republican Party, known as the Tea Party. Apparently, they aim to represent a more radical and hardcore " anti-government " viewpoint.

So with these three groups of politicians pointing fingers at one another we are left wondering who is manning the battle station. We need leadership that is willing to tackle this very serious quandary of growing debts that threaten to cause us to default on our national financial obligations for the first in history!

The Problem

America is approaching what is known as the National Debt Ceiling. In reality this is a self-imposed boundary that Congress uses as a tool to control how much our Federal Government borrows to sustain it’s operations.

In simplistic terms, it’s like a family approaching the limit on what they can borrow on their credit cards. Of course, the biggest failure of such an analogy is that the family cardholders don't determine their own credit limitations.

Its true that the credit limit numbers for a family may run into the thousand or perhaps even in some cases millions of dollars. The nation, on the other hand, is facing the threat of surpassing a staggering debt limit of 14.9 trillion dollars! Interestingly enough the solution for fixing both state of affairs are based around the same common sense principles.

Seriously, when you take a moment to really think about it, our politicians are abdicating their sworn oaths to represent and conduct governance on behalf of the people who elected them. That’s quite a statement, especially from the StayPos corner of the world :-)

I’m usually writing about the positive slant on everything, but in this case there isn't really much to say regarding this except that it resembles a bunch of grown ups acting like children playing in a big sand box!!

The Solution

Now the purpose of this discussion is not centered around which party is exclusively right in their approach to fixing these problems. In my opinion it’s about something of much greater importance, which is how we get our government to get back to actually working again for the American people.

If a family is spending money indiscriminately, and has no idea of how to budget any of its finances we would all agree that at some point that behavior will have calamitous consequences. The exact same thing applies to the nation. Although the solutions for the nation are much more complicated in terms of size, scope and political will, the actually solutions themselves are basic common sense:

• Slow the rate and amount of spending in relation to revenue that is being generated.
• Review, prioritize, reduce or eliminate spending that is causing the rapid acceleration of indebtedness.
• Increase the rate and amount of revenue that is coming into the household or economy.

In the case of the latter, increasing revenues for our national economy this is where the ideological standoff appears to be taking precedence over the overall good of the country. After all the political grandstanding and gamesmanship is done as a nation we must and will come to an acceptable outcome.

In Conclusion

In my view the American people want to see their government work. We want to see our politicians demonstrate the skill and ability to work together to solve the challenges that are before our nation.

We want to see them stop employing entrenched political posturing and relying upon crises management to handle the next national crisis that demands a resolution! One thing can be sure and that is when this one is done there will be another one waiting of some form or fashion.

The time has come for courage and conviction that is squarely focused on returning America back to a place that exemplifies the beauty of the worlds oldest surviving representative democracy.

StayPos!