On Priorities

We hear so much talk these days of budget priorities, especially in the wake of Hurricane Irene with Eric Cantor, the Majority Leader of the House, insisting that other cuts have to be found to balance the aid given to victims, that it got me thinking about proper priorities. The Republicans are also telling us constantly that the nation, like a family, has to balance its budget. So I posited a normal family, still employed, but trying to dig out from debt. And I further posited that they were responsible and planned properly.

So I imagined that they had a family meeting and went through the entire budget and decided where they could cut. They decided they had to pay the mortgage and the car payments, but they did consider buying a cheaper car or delaying replacement when the time came. But they decided to make some sensible measures to cut discretionary spending. Here are some decisions they took.

• To forgo eating out
• When eating in, to reduce portion size and get healthy as well as save money
• Ensure all lights were left off when leaving a room so as to save electricity.
• To limit showers to 10 minutes instead of luxuriating, in order to save both electricity and water
• To run the lawn sprinkler system only twice a week in order to save water

So their system showed a steady decline in expenditures without any noticeable loss of utility and they were pleased with themselves. But one day the father came home and noticed the lights on in the backyard, so he rushed to the back of the house and saw his eldest son playing with the garden house wasting both water and electricity. So he immediately turned off the light and the water and demanded to know from his son where he was going to make cuts to compensate for his profligate use of water and electricity. And while they argued, the fire that the son had been attempting to put out consumed the house and they lost everything.

Now this is a contrived example, but it does seem to me to mirror the totally inflexible Republican approach to budgeting. They are quite happy to argue about where cuts should be made, all the time ignoring that the economy is being destroyed by an unemployment rate of over 9%. A normal family wouldn't have bothered for a minute about using extra water or electricity as their house was being threatened. They would have taken any and all steps necessary to save it. But our Republican friends are far more interested in dogma for its own sake than they are in any common sense solutions.

Let's hope that in November of 2012 the Republicans and especially the Tea Party are sent packing and banished from Washington for a long while.