If ever there was a time to re-invent our government it would be now. Our two parties have landed us in a deadlock of philosophy. Do we borrow more or do we spend less? Do we demand more from our citizens to pay for our lifestyle or do we cut the lifestyle down? There is absolutely no way the framers had this situation in mind when they declared our country ready to stand on its own feet.
We must be free. We must not be beholden to anyone as our rights are born with us. But this time we chose to be beholden to someone. We chose to borrow the money from other countries & institutions. We can not be free if we have to answer to our debt holders. But I digress…
What if we stood up together, all Americans, and said “I hired these people to run the country well. They are not performing their jobs and I wish to fire them. My taxes will not go toward paying their salaries until we have new elections and start fresh”. We would still file and pay our taxes but instead of paying the IRS we would hold the money in escrow until a new government is sworn in.
Of course that doesn’t help the current situation. Launching such a campaign now would surely cause our country to go into default and we would suffer both in the short term and long term. What do we do now?
We compromise!
There are two sides. Both sides are wrong. Both sides, if they have their way, will cause some sort of damage to our economy or our lifestyle. The best we can hope for is to minimize the damage. Take what hurts the least from both parties and shelve the rest. I don’t want the ceiling raised. It makes no sense to borrow more money when we can’t pay back what we owe now. But I’m not stupid enough to think we can go through life without paying for what we need. We will have to raise taxes. We will have to close loopholes. Should we hit the rich more than anyone else? No, if they’ve earned their wealth they should be able to enjoy it. If they had their wealth handed to them (like a gift or from a relative’s passing) that’s another story. You earn it, you keep it.
Companies should not pay a fortune to do business here, not if we want people to seek the American dream. We can’t dangle that carrot and then tell them to pay extra for the pleasure of eating it when they finally get it!
