The Washington legislature is still in session, for two more weeks. Still no budget deal. The House finally released its proposed budget over the weekend and the Senate was expected to do so this week. Doesn’t leave much time for debate. Perhaps they are taking a cue from the Congress and waiting till the last minute so that they all can get the requisite air time to voice their positions on various issues sure to come up in the next election. The Congressional “shutdown sideshow” was pathetic. In the end the cuts they made were approximately 2.5% of the $1.7 trillion dollar budget! Yet they held the country –by that I refer to the cable news media- hostage for two days with countdown clocks and round the clock competing press conferences. In the end nothing changed. The politicians used the “shutdown” as means of posturing for the next election cycle. If only they would actually debate the budget expenditures instead of a myriad of ideological preferences that in the end are but a tiny per-centage of the overall budget. Congress and our own state legislature need to take a step back and look at what is really happening to our economy. Former Secretary of State James Baker had a lot to say in a television interview over the weekend. But the most telling thing he said was this, “The United States needs to realize that it’s broke!” He didn’t mean broken, he meant POOR —broke! He is right and it is the single most pressing issue for our lawmakers at every level. Our lawmakers (budget makers) must learn to deal with the realities of the current economic situation and make decisions that will ensure we don’t go bankrupt. What happened in Japan is a catastrophe, it is also a shot across the bow. One of our leading trade partners is looking at having to spend more than $300 billion dollars to recover from the earthquake and tsunami. It is money it won’t be spending in the U.S. or on U.S. products. Japan could very well be bankrupted by it all.
Lawmakers at every level should determine which governmental programs are essential as well as what funding is essential to keep our cities, counties, states and country from going bankrupt. Which services are absolutely necessary and which will bring us back to some level of prosperity. One example is education, despite shrinking revenues we cannot cut education funding and expect to have workers capable of driving our economy on the road to a real recovery. Without an educated workforce we will find ourselves stuck in the poor house, burdened by debt and no longer the economic leader of the world.
There are other essential services and programs our governments should deliver and the lawmakers need to put ideology aside and determine which they are and fund them at levels that will ensure our future economic growth and stability.
The remaining programs and services heretofore funded by local, state and federal government are going to have to make do with what is left and/or shut down. If we take this approach I believe the innovation we’ve exhibited as a country for most of our 237 years will take over and help to fill the gap in funding. To get there our political “leaders” must do their job and set the priorities.
