Quote:
Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
So thus thread has also deteriorated into a bash Obama scene.
Cripes, can't we see what's happening? First, let's try to agree that the most serious threat facing the U.S. is the profligate spending of our government.
If we can agree on that, now what do we have?
We have a government--that includes the President, the House and the Senate--that is unwilling to address that issue with legislation that would reduce the deficit and ultimately begin to reduce the national debt.
The President has put forth a plan that would reduce the national debt by $1 trillion, but it would take ten years to accomplish--ten years!! A piddly 7% reduction in the amount of debt this country has accumulated, taking ten years to do so. Unbelievable!
What have members of Congress said? Nothing meaningful. Both parties can be blamed. One party controls the House and the other controls the Senate.
Why are our elected representatives acting so irresponsibly? Because the feelings of the electorate are uncertain? No. The plurality of the opinion polls showing that the public wants fiscal reform would be called a landslide were it an election. So why aren't our elected representatives doing something? This isn't a hard problem. It's not rocket science...it's simple arithmetic. There's no sense repeating it here, we all know the numbers.
The answer is pretty simple. All those 535 jobs in Washington are pretty sweet deals. Once elected, none of them want to lose those jobs. They know that the political advisors can come up with plans to manipulate the gullible electorate at election rime. They do it all the time. But it takes money...lots of it.
So where does all that money come from? The special interests, of course. The health insurance companies, the trail lawyers, the NRA, the defense contractors, the wealthiest among us. They all funnel lots and lots of money to those 535 and make damned well sure that they know what legislation to pass and what not to consider that would favor all of them.
So why has there been so little discussion or proposals to address all those issues that even the most simple among us know will have to be confronted sooner rather than later? Why is the Defense Department still buying stuff that even the military doesn't want or admits it doesn't need? How come nothing has been done to reduce the escalating cost of health care? It's growing even faster now than when everyone was hollering and yelling at town hall meetings last year. Many argued that health care must remain under the control of the private sector. Once the healthcare legislation was passed (Obamacare) that assured that, what happened? The health insurance companies increased their premiums by an average of about 11% and paid their executives big bonuses. How come we aren't making the obviously needed changes in Social Security? We can't afford the present system and everyone knows it. How come increased taxation of multi-millionaires and billionaires being considered when about 70% of the public believes it would be appropriate.
The reason of course has nothing to do with what we argue about here...that Obama does this or stands for that or wasn't born here. Or that the Democrats were responsible for this or that and the Republicans will change that.
The reason is simple,of course. The moneyed special interests are running this country for their own benefit. As long as they can keep us arguing about the idealology of the President or one party or the other, as long as they can keep the volume of that debate active and loud, then they can continue to operate in the back halls of the capitol paying off those 535 who can do something about the problems. Paying them to make sure that the needs of the special interests are met, not those of the country, certainly not what the public might want.
So if all of you want to continue to debate whether the President did this or didn't do that, or that you were 100% accurate in predicting how he might act if elected...go ahead an keep it up. All that you're doing is misdirecting the focus away from the issues and the people who can and should address the country's problems.
Go ahead...keep it up.
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Most of what you say in this post is true, HOWEVER, you neglected to even mention the President in your thread starter and honed in on ONLY ONE GROUP...ONE ! That was the reason for my post !
Having heard the speaker mention that some of those government jobs created in this administration may have to go and hearing Pelosi again make fun of him for saying that makes me believe even more in what you say.
Again, the reason for my post was not specifically to "bash Obama" but more wondering why you lay the current blame on such a narrow group of folks and ignore the major player who will veto whatever the House passes anyway...he has said that !
