How To deal With A Political Hot Potato

THE CENTURION CHRONICLE
Special issue – Feb 2010

HOW TO DEAL WITH A POLITICAL HOT POTATO
(palm it off to a bi-partisan Commission)

President Obama’s executive order – setting up a bi-partisan Commission to deal with our escalating load of budget deficits and debt – is clearly a sign that neither he nor his hotshot advisors have a clue about what to do about it. It’s also a clear sign that his Administration has given up any pretence of being able to get anything worthwhile accomplished, on any issue, with this current Congress ( even though his party has controlling majorities in both chambers).

No matter what face one might put on it, it’s just abject surrender to circumstances. A Pontius Pilate-style washing of its hands of a very troublesome problem. None of that saying much for the “leadership” quotient everyone anticipated from all that 2008 campaign rhetoric about “change” or “yes, we can!”

But at least he’s had the smarts to appoint two stalwart co-Chairs to handle this Commission. Two highly regarded and experienced people with reputations for having level-headed pragmatism rather than ideological fixations. All of which gives us some hope that these two gentlemen, former Senator Alan Simpson (R. WY), and Mr. Erskine Bowles (D. former Clinton White House Chief of Staff), might actually be able to come up with some sane solutions to an otherwise insane situation.

We should all wish them well, and much good luck. They’ll need all of it they can get.

One of the most critical problem they face, right from the start, is to make sure that the rest of the Commission’s membership doesn’t become composed of only selected partisan politicos from both major parties, instead of more common-sense and results- oriented people with solid economic, financial, and small business backgrounds, and perhaps, a good sprinkling of ordinary citizens….housewives, working stiffs, shop keepers, and the like, as well.

The last time such a Commission was set up to try and straighten out the government’s fiscal and budgetary problems was some thirty years ago . The Grace Commission, Chaired by Mr. Grace, and manned by other stalwarts, came up with some very creditable recommendations. The most stunning and shocking of these being their discovery that, because our government’s fiscal and budgetary process was so inefficient and wasteful, any fiscal year’s budget proposal could automatically have 30% of its global figure lopped off, right off the top, without any need for analysis and review, and no single program, or any other items therein, would suffer for it!

And, because of that, they seriously suggested that such measures be adopted and applied to any future budget proposals presented to Congress. Naturally, such an idea was roundly scoffed at, derided, and otherwise dismissed by the Congress of that time….and every other one….ever since. And look where we are today!

All of which just reinforces the case for establishing term limits for Congress. It also emphasizes the urgent need for us, the taxpaying citizens of this country, to focus on getting more independent members elected to it. Enough of them so that the flim-flam ideologues from both major parties will no longer be able to stride rough-shod over our collective common interest. That is….having a government with common-sense and balanced taxing and spending policies that will provide us with sane budgets and limited debt obligations.

Well, maybe the real answer to all of these money problems is to call for the Treasury, the Senate Finance Committee, and the House Ways and Means Committee, to be packed solely with Jewish mothers and Chinese wives. If that doesn’t fix our financial problems in a New York minute….nothing else will!

CENTURION