Debt Super Committee: Nation Continues to Suffer from Appalling Lack of Leadership

Conservatism 101: D.I.Y. Political Education

The failures of the Congressional Debt Super Committee have Da Tool Guy examining the entire process. His verdict? The short answer is: an extremely disappointing failure of leadership from both parties. The longer answer is in this week’s Conservatism 101.

CIVICS FOR THE MASSES

With the collapse of the so-called deficit reduction super committee economic uncertainty remains rife.

There was a Thanksgiving deadline to cut the budget by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. That was part of a deal reached to attempt to stave off a credit down-grade earlier this year — an attempt which largely failed.

Both sides are blaming the other, with the Democrats screaming about Republican refusal to cut defense spending and the GOP squalling about entitlement spending.

Both sides need to grow up.

I’m not one to ever say we should not support our military. These men, as George Orwell and Rudyard Kipling both stated, guard us in our sleep and stand ready to do violence on our behalf. Whatever they need they should have.

However to say there is not waste, fraud and abuse in the Department of Defense is akin to saying water is not wet. Certainly there are cuts which can be made to defense spending — such as perhaps not involving our military in every brushfire which catches media attention.

Likewise to say there are no cuts which can be made to government entitlements is likewise disingenuous at best.

Both sides need to wake up and realize we’ve spent ourselves into near oblivion.

I heard on the radio the other day that Missouri public workers are the lowest paid in the nation, and the average Missouri state worker makes one-third less than a federal worker doing the equivalent job. What was disturbing to me was that no one was suggesting that perhaps federal workers were overpaid, only that Missouri workers were underpaid.

I find the whole thing surreal.

Congress and the president are, as the old saying goes, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We are facing economic collapse and yet instead of saying to the American people “We must tighten our belts, the federal government is too big,” the president simply demands more spending.

This president quadrupled the national debt. He has dumped more and more regulation on American business until business owners are afraid to do anything for fear of falling afoul of some regulation and having some faceless bureaucrat thousands of miles away shut them down.

Rational adults would look at the chasm yawning before us, and the legacy of more than 200 years of freedom behind them and back away. Not so our “leaders,”

This president and the Congressional leaders on both sides seem determined to shove the nation into the abyss.

What created this crisis?

The causes would take volumes to fill. No leadership from the president, ideological inflexibility on the part of leaders of both parties, plain old-fashioned short-sightedness and greed?

All of the above and more.

The failure to reach an agreement brings with it automatic cuts to begin in 2013 — half from defense and half from domestic spending.

The $55 billion a year which would come from defense spending is roughly 10 percent of the Pentagon’s budget.
This was all politics. Both sides have constituencies to placate and with an election coming both sides wanted to have an issue to beat the other with. The reality is there are apparently no statesmen in the room who can put country ahead of person — and the nation suffers for it.

by DaToolGuy
images: dbkp file; hubpages

DaToolGuy is a small town journalist with big time dreams. He’s spent his entire adult life laboring in the obscurity he actually deserves. But he’ll take the opportunity to show off when it comes.

DaToolGuy writes regularly at View from Flyover Country.

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