Once more, both Houses of Congress have shirked their responsibility to create a budget for the coming fiscal year. Instead, they have opted for a continuing resolution as in the past. How many times have they done this? It seems every year they fail to produce a budget both Houses and Parties can agree upon, so they say, "Let's just use last year's budget and continue to spend at the same rate." All the while knowing the country is spending at an unsustainable rate and the national debt continues to grow. They will have to raise the debt ceiling in less than two weeks to ensure enough money is in the treasury to cover ongoing expenditures. December 14, 2021 Congress raised the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion. Further demonstrating their imcompetence and lack of concern for the welfare of their constituents and their progeny.
Imagine if this were the way American families dealt with their budgets. Husband and Wife cannot agree on a budget for the coming year, so they agree to keep spending at the identical amounts as they did the past year. But they have maxed out their credit cards, so they unilaterally increase their credit limit without consulting the credit card providers. Does this make sense? Now they will go deeper into debt, and without a new source of income, they will eventually have to declare bankruptcy, or their creditors will come and take away their assets.
But the government can always come up with additional revenue. They have two methods for doing this. They can impose higher taxes or have the Fed issue them more money, which leads to higher inflation, which is another form of taxation. So, in the end, the taxpayer always pays the price for Congress's failure to produce a balanced budget.
Isn't one of the primary reasons Congress is elected to office to produce a budget? Yet, for some reason, despite their failure to do so, we elect the same politicians election cycle after election cycle. If one of us were to fail at our jobs year after year, we would have been fired long ago. So why haven't we fired these poor performers? Instead, we continue to reward them. We allow them to give themselves pay raises. We let them live off of expense accounts. We provide them with better health insurance than any we can purchase in the free market. We let them get rich by using their position to acquire paid speaking engagements. And then we pay them for the rest of their lives for all the damage they have done.
There is something terribly wrong with all of this. But we can make things right. We can tell them we are sick and tired of their poor performance and all of their backdoor dealings. We can take away their power to take advantage of us. It is very simple. We vote them out of office. We elect officials who will listen to us instead of those who shower us with platitudes. Then, when we observe any politician not listening to us, we vote against that person at the next opportunity. We no longer vote based on party affiliation but instead vote for those who pay attention, no matter their party.