Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

     I’ll be the first to admit that I try to keep current on world events. Both media and print news tend to be a big part of my day and I like to view the world in a larger picture. I was otherwise occupied this week, however, when the President took up a little of the airwaves and spoke to the American people in his “oh woe is me” speech concerning the unwillingness of Congress to “work with him” to find a solution to the debt crisis.

     The sound bites will roll out this week and my favorite so far is Obama stating that there could be no compromise as long as Congressional Republicans continue to ask for deep spending cuts. Oh my…what a novel approach Mr. President!

      Let’s push away politics for a minute and try to unspin a little of the rhetoric and get to the point here. This country and its finances are in real serious trouble here folks. I say this simply from the standpoint of looking at the situation and suddenly realizing that the United States of America is that young over extended couple who suddenly realizes that their best course of action is to just not answer the phone anymore so they don’t have to talk to the debt collectors.

     The time for partisan politics and name calling is long over here folks, and the hard choices have to be made. If we are calling them cuts in the budgets, then let us truly make them cuts. Not just reductions in the amount we were going to spend, but actually spend less than we did last year. Isn’t that what you and I have had to do?

     The first rule of getting out of debt is to spend less than you bring in. This is accomplished two ways…either cut spending, or raise more money. Now what we have to be mindful of are the pleas from some well meaning politicians that we need to raise taxes, for just a little while to “make it through these trying times”. I wasn’t born yesterday and both you and I know that if allowed the taxes will be raised and not lowered when the “good times” come back around. Anyone remember when the state of Iowa raised the sales tax in emergency times? Weren’t we told that it was only temporary?

     Perhaps one of the things that has made me the most angry in this entire situation are the pundits who warn of how we need to protect and boost the “market” because if we default on our debt it will send the markets south. Well in the words of one great comedian…. “Exscusssssseee Meeeee”! Isn’t it the Wall Street investors and stock traders in the financial industries that put us in this mess to start with? You will get none of my sympathy or time.

     It’s time for someone to take the bull by the horns so to speak, and give this nation and it’s leaders of change a great big slap upside the head and quit squabbling about this and that, and just get the work done since that is why we sent them to Washington in the first place. This isn’t a Republican problem, or a Democratic one….it’s an American one and one that the politicians need to bring to the kitchen tables of middle America and take a lesson on budgeting and hard choices at. It’s time we think not only of today, but of the future, for without that forethought we are all doomed.

See you next week…Remember, we’re all in this together.