Both Republicans and Democrats Complicit in U.S. Decline

Neither side is without blame for the mess we’re in. Both sides voted for the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and both sides continue to support them. Both sides have intervened in the affairs of foreign nations and both sides spend money like sailors on shore leave in their attempts to buy the vote from one group or another.  

George Bush proposed a stimulus package and both the Republicans and Democrats voted for it. The new Democratic administration proposed another stimulus package and  the Democrats and Republicans voted for it and also asked for the funds knowing full well that those funds were adding to the deficit.

Both the Republicans and the Democrats have neglected to mandate balanced budgets or fiscal responsibility based on the financial realities that face every working citizen in this country every goddamned day. They are above such things and are actually exempt from the laws they themselves pass.

Since the advent of Medicare and the Great Society, each administration has been kicking another brick under the pyramid in order to prop up bad policy and to pass the debt for such on to a new generation. There isn’t a whole lot of difference between either party from what recent history reveals. Each change brings more spending on entitlements and increased costs for people who only want to get ahead in this world so they’ll have enough to raise and educate their children and have enough to live comfortably in their retirement years.

The government should have nothing to do with any of that.

But here they are, inside every major system in the country and making a shambles out of it. The public school systems across the nation are shameful in their costs and failure to deliver results on a par with other nations. To them it is all about the lunch programs or teaching diversity whereas in other nations it’s all about math and science. There is nothing in the Constitution that says the Federal Government, the people who are supposed to be providing for our common defense and creating a level playing field for business, should be involved with the day to day minutia of what’s going on in a public school. That’s for the States to provide.  And the result of the Federal Government buying its way into the public school system is increased requests now for them to fix it. Go figure. It's like asking an arsonist for help putting out a fire.

There is also no mandate for the government to be involved in your medical care but there they are stacking yet another bureaucratic plan on top of the other past bureaucratic plans before it and each infusing more money into it to cover for it's failures.

And throughout it all, each administration, Republican or Democrat, has added to the mess, raised the debt ceiling, voted for the unfunded mandate and attempted to fix the previous administrations fiscal missteps by either throwing more money at it or paying out less in benefits.

So now when a Republican  presidential hopeful comes along and says he wants to right the sinking ship, they have little to stand on. The Republicans like Paul Ryan actually asked for stimulus money for his state. Many Republicans have asked just like many Democrats have asked. Yes, to their credit there were also Republicans who refused stimulus funds, they get it, but they are but a cry in the wilderness.  And I'll only mention RomneyCare.

But ultimately, it’s just all about the dough to these bureaucrats, each clamoring for Federal money for their state and bowing to all the conditions and strings attached to it no matter whether it’s harmful to the nation and its people in the long run. The Congress has gone along with many hair brained spending scemes like "No Child Left Behind" and "Medicaid Plan B" prescription benefit plan.

The Federal Government has become a giant "Make Work" program and results are not as important as long as the government checks keep coming in. Since government doesn'ctually produce anything, this sends the country into deficit.

Even those crusaders for reform have skeletons in their closets voting for stimulus packages, requesting government money and voting for endless wars or crazy spending by past administrations. No one, it seems, has any moral high ground anymore. We’ve become a society too easily bought and it shows.

But there is now a nation of people the government has to support and much of it is mandated by law.  This is really what the people will decide in November: Which side can keep those checks coming?

By the way things are looking, the answer will probably be: Neither.