The Party of NO? Wish It Were So.

As we all know after listening to our president smile his way through another incredibly weak interview with the White House press room bureaucrats known as "60 Minutes,"  Mr. Obama would have solved all of the problems he inherited if only it were not for those nasty, un compromising recalcitrant obstacles known as republicans.  He, of course, had little to say about the mess promiscuous spending and welfare state mentality has brought to Italy and Greece or any of the many bankrupt countries around the globe.  He, of course, did not mention the bankrupt states in our own homeland - California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island.  His vision and smiling attitude toward any problem is indicative of either someone who cannot process fact and consequence or, perhaps, just simple delusion overwhelms anyone beset with so many bad ideas with predictably bad outcomes.

We have heard, studied and analyzed all the arguments for deficit spending and Keynesian nonsense designed to get us through this period of adjustment.  It is not a period of adjustment.  It is not a passing economic phenomenon that will go away to be ultimately replaced with more economic growth and jobs creation and increased wealth for all.  Those days are gone; long gone.

America is a financial house of cards.  Built and inflated by so many federal government involvements and subsidies and bureaucracies and employees and programs that one can no longer catalog much less focus on a series of carefully designed steps to correct the situation.  In the past, before the debt deluge of the last 11 years, carefully planned reversals, shutdowns and cutbacks of certain activities and programs would have served the economy and the financial strength of America well.  It is no longer the case.

The 2008 election kicked out a fiscally and financially irresponsible group of elected officials and replaced them with the only available alternative – a group of even more irresponsible officials who long awaited their moment of opportunity.  And they seized it.  Every component of their ambitious plans were funded and exaggerated to the maximum.  These efforts were facilitated by an extensive program of fear, threats and terror all supported without any analysis or objection by an embedded media that neither has the training or the spine to educate and inform in an intelligent and objective manner. 

So the last best hope came in 2010 and the people, knowing full well that the path we were on was one of devastation and destruction, actually turned back to the party that they had only two years earlier rejected.   They gave them a mandate in the form of a large majority in the House of Representatives.  The very one place where the people can make their voice heard every two years.  The very one place that is constitutionally empowered to control the purse strings – the budget and the spending bills.  They gave the newly elected officials the mandate to put an end to the nonsense.  Rein in the spending; reduce the deficits and stop adding to the debt.  That was the mandate.  It was not about social issues or cultural considerations.  It was not focused on who you could or could not marry or serve in the military or what type of health insurance policy you could or must buy or how many thousands of bureaucrats could massage your privates before boarding a plane or listen to your phone conversations and read your emails.  The people were smart enough to know that if your curtail the spending; live within your means; demand sacrifice from all and a bit more from those who either did well or just rode the gravy train during the buildup period, that gradually balance and correction would occur.   Not overnight.  But the message would go out and responsibility would return.

They knew that the 2008 winners would never impose limits on themselves.  They would not discipline themselves because they were the fortuitous beneficiaries of the irresponsibility of the breakdown of fundamentals by the other party.  The 2008 winners were going to seize the moment big time.  Never miss out on the opportunities afforded you by a crisis one of their fools said.  Carpe Diem.

So the people asked the other guys to just say no.  Bring back some balance.  Some common sense.  Make the initial corrections.

November 4, 2010 the debt of the United States was - $13.7 trillion.

Yesterday, the debt of the United States was - $15.1 trillion.

Yes, folks, that is right.  Since the people asked the republicans to stop the spending; reduce the deficits; stop adding to the debt; just a little over one year ago, the debt has risen by $1.4 trillion.  How’s that for a responsive representative democracy at work?

What is left for the people to do when they empower a group with the mandate to stop the nonsense and the group empowered does exactly the opposite?  Who do the people turn to?  What choices are left?  The country is being destroyed by both parties and we only have two choices.  What would you do?  The party with most of the power will continue their promiscuous ways until the entire country collapses.  The party with the ability to stop them even though they have limited power lacks the leadership and the communication skills to take even minimal corrective action.  And now we again enter a period of listening to candidates talk about what they would do knowing full well that the people have already given their party the ability to stop things and they won’t do it.  All the while the spending goes on and on.

You are witnessing the destruction of your country while the elected officials and their millions of hired bureaucrats prosper.  You are witnessing the direct outcome of a failed system of governance – one that sounded so good in theory but lacks the defined limits of fiscal and financial responsibility; the harsh but always needed steps of personal accountability by anyone accessing the public treasury and the century’s old lessons of the always predictable result of combining human weakness with a lack of discipline.

$1.4 trillion of new debt in thirteen months.  The party of no?  You've got to be kidding.