I continue to question why so many among us refuse to acknowledge the arrogance emanating from Washington and the failure of leadership to actually do something timely, effective and productive to get a grip on the throat of debt and deficit.
Those issues, viewed through the eyes of those who Washington bureaucrats consider “ordinary citizens,” too often appear to be ignored. That is because little or nothing is being done in Washington.
After a four-year gap, I hear we have a budget. Where has it been for the past four years under President Obama, as it is constitutionally required to be written and approved annually? Now we must watch diligently to see that the nation’s leadership honors and adheres to that budget.
We must also hope that politicians are intelligent enough to finally realize that if you must borrow 42 percent of what you need to meet the nation’s fiscal responsibilities, following a budget is imperative.
If you or I found it necessary to borrow that percentage to meet our obligations, it would take a short time for us to realize we are in a jam. We woud soon be unable to even pay the interest on those loans — and that is precisely where this country is marching. It’s high time for Washington to get a dose of reality.
For various reasons, many still refuse to believe we are at the brink of a fiscal morass and must act now to get turned in the direction of recovery. Directional change won’t work unless we force Washington to seek effective, rational and timely answers.
After all the scare tactics the president has been putting out concerning the effects of the sequester, some have been pulled back and softened somewhat. Those tactics included shutdowns and discontinued government-funded programs, as well as closing museums and monuments, parks and even shutting down demonstrations by the U.S. military’s Thunderbirds and Blue Angels aerial teams. It also brought the temporary halt of White House tours.
While I believe that in this current situation every cent saved counts, the president? Not so much.
Rather than offer examples of common sense and something close to economic sanity, he saw fit to hop aboard Air Force 1 for a jaunt to sunny Florida for a few rounds of golf with Tiger Woods. I’m sure the expense of that trip is considered chump change in Washington, but not so with average Americans.
The trip cost about $180,000 per hour. Chump change? Chump seems to apply to those of us who quietly allow this nonsense to go on unchallenged.
We could all agree to trips to try and parley with some foreign power or to inspect our nation after some disaster, but a golf trip? This in-your-face adventure by the president tells me he’s thinking we should “do as he says and not as he does.”
It is apparent his concern for national problems — and your problems — are not as close to his heart as he professes. He sweet-talked his way to a second term and pretense now of needing to salve the wounds of the people is out the window.
President Obama clearly shows little thankfulness for the benefits we chumps provide. They include wages, health care, lifetime protection, travel expenses and all the things he evidently feels entitled to and which he has liberally lavished on himself, family and friends.
I have long been a proponent of rooting out and destroying every speck of waste, fraud and abuse possible. While not much of a math whiz, I am willing to bet protecting your dollars from those three diseases of our system would make the $85 billion in cuts for this year look microscopic in comparison.
I also believe welfare and Social Security disability are riddled with those diseases, but Washington turns its head.
As a nation we appear willing to be content with leadership that varies from uncaring and politically driven to self-centered, arrogant and incompetent, from top to bottom. The nation deserves to have and pays dearly to have leadership it can be proud of and in which it can have confidence.
(Mr. Hillyard lives in Eldred Township, Pa.)
