A Government that Cannot Govern

Am I serious? Yes, I am!! The United States government is farther in debt than it has ever been in its entire history. How did we as a, once prosperous, nation allow ourselves to get this far in debt? Why are we continuing to spend money we do not have? Is there anything we can do about it?

At one time, we ,as a people, thought that if we needed something we could work to get it. We believed that honesty and hard work were the framework needed to build success. the trend in the last 90 to 100 years has been to turn to the government to take care of our crises. We have government departments to handle natural disasters so we can rebuild after hurricanes and tornadoes. The government takes care of those who do not have the money to take care of themselves, through welfare programs and publicly funded private organizations. These government sponsored programs are not constitutional. They allow the government to spend the peoples money, our money, to help others out. When the need is greater than the amount they have to spend, the government simply takes more from the people. The problem is we, the people, established the government. We created it. The government belongs to us, yet, they take our money and spend it how they think is best. We have allowed our politicians to believe they think and act for us and know what is best for us even though we all are capable of making decisions on our own. If we wanted to provide for the poor, we do not need the government to take our money and do it for us. We could do it ourselves. Can they, as politicians, spend your and my money as conservatively as we could? No, they cannot and do not! If a father gives his son money to spend on what he wants to spend it, he will blow it as soon as he gets it, but, once that son gets a job and has to save his money to buy a car, he will go and find the best value for the money he earned. Furthermore, he will go find the best deal on insurance he can find. He will learn the meaning of words like value and accountability. The same is true for politicians. Politicians are taking the money they have not earned, money they have not worked for, and are given free reign to spend it. They take our money and hire chefs, butlers, and maids. They use our money to hire Limos and limo drivers. They use our money to throw parties. They even use our money, on occasion, to purchase illegal drugs, have affairs, hire prostitutes, and bribe officials. David Crockett¹, as a politician, lost a constituent, because he was going to use tax dollars to help out a widow woman whose house burnt down. The constituent said that, if Mr. Crockett wanted to help her, he could have given her money out of his own pocket, instead of the pockets of his constituents. We have found our politicians doing good deeds (providing aide to the people of Haiti, helping out tornado victims, providing housing for the poor...etc) but they are not using their money to do it. they are using our money. If I wanted to help someone out, shouldn't I have the right to choose who and when I would help them? Would it be a good deed, if I ,wanting to help out someone, just went to your house and threatened to throw you in jail if you did not give me money to send to those that needed help? Am I being Dramatic? If you think so, try to not pay your taxes because they gave a part of them to aide Haiti.

Now that we have identified an obvious problem in the country's spending habits, why is it still happening? As I am sure you must know, I am not the first person to hit on this problem with our nations spending habits. The reason it has not changed is simple. No one has changed it. The real question is, " Whose job is it to change government policy?" That can be answered with the question, "Whose government is this?" It is our government. It is our job to change it. If we leave the changing of it to the officials we put in charge of it, then we will be disappointed. If things are going bad in a business, whether it be a corporation or a small family owned enterprise, change comes from the top (the boss). As a man who has been in management before, I have noticed, when you have a lazy crew, you replace the supervisor. When you have a lazy supervisor, you replace the manager of the supervisor. We need to go above the point of corruption and fix it. Unfortunately the point of corruption is the top of the political world, the president. The corruption in every aspect of politics, is not news to anyone, but the most naive. So who is above the president? Who is in charge of the man in charge? We are. This is our government. We own it. We are responsible for all of its actions. Just as a father is responsible for the actions of his son, or a driver is responsible of the actions of his/her car. We elect. It is our fault this government is going bankrupt. We elected the officials that are spending our money. You, the reader, and I need to take responsibility for the actions of the congressmen/women that we put in office. We are accountable. We want health care, public transportation, and child welfare services, but we do not want to spend our money to get those things. That is simply not logical. If we want those things, we will pay for them. The real choice is, do we want to control how much we spend on them, or do we want some man/woman, who did not earn the money, to decide how much to spend on them. It is our call. We must fix this problem before it gets worse.

Can this massive problem be fixed? Is our nation doomed to exist only in the pages of the history books? I believe that the road to fixing this problem of irresponsible government spending is not a short one, but can be traveled. This nation was founded on the principle of fixing the wrong practices of politicians. It was formed by political reformers who wanted to see a more perfect union. If we, the people, want to fix the financial crisis our nation is on the brink of before we fall into the abyss, then we need to act now. There is only one course of action that will bring success and that success is, I believed, not guaranteed. We must write to our congressmen and congresswomen, to our newspapers, and to our families. We need to inform those in politics what we expect of them. Ask them to push for financial reform. As Americans we must act together before it is too late. We need to make them accountable for the money they spend, by cutting budgets to all departments of government. We need to remind them we are the boss, that they work for us (not on our behalf). If they we do not see bills that limit government spending, then elect someone else. Let them know that party lines will be crossed, and that we are not going to stand for unchecked government spending. That it is not the place for our government to tell us who we are to buy health care for, but that we can decide who we help and how we do it. This is not a right-wing left-wing issue it is a spending issue. There is not a politician in office right now that this should not effect regardless of their political affiliations. After you are done with your congress send the same letter to your state politicians. Send it to senators. Send it to governors. Next, send it to your newspapers. They need to know that we, as a nation, are not going to stand for unchecked government spending anymore. Finally, email this post to every person you call family, friend, co-worker, or religious leader. Buy a stamp and send this to every address in your address book. Pick up your phone and call every number on your cell-phone contact page. If we can ,once again, act as a nation, then we can change the face of our government to our benefit. How good will it feel to be able to walk down the street and know that our president, congress, senate, governor, or any political leader has our best interests at heart again?

In closing, "reformation" is a word that is equal to hard work and honesty. This is not something that we can leave up to anyone else. This is a need that we, the people, must meet. I believe it is possible to reform our government, however I do not think that we will do those things necessary to fix our nation. Why? Because, over the course of time we have gotten used to the government deciding how we should spend our money. We have gotten used to the government solving our problems for us. We have gotten used to the idea that it is the governments job to tell us how to live, where to build, what to build, when to build, what is good for us to eat, drink, and watch on TV, where and what we can smoke, how to raise our children, and the list goes on. We should, as a people, be telling the government these things, and not the other way around. Write your letters. Do it now. Or, we can watch and see if I am right.

¹Not Yours to Give" written by Edward S. Ellis in 1884