Debt-limit revisited

Dear Congress and the President:

The deadline for that whole debt-limit thing? That’s this coming Tuesday. Are you going to get around to do anything? Or do you plan to sink the whole thing?

You might want to take some form of action. Because historically speaking, a lot of bad stuff happens when an entire country’s economy tanks irrecoverably. And when the bad stuff happens in the country to the people, the people tend to think towards visiting unhappiness upon the government.

The vast majority of us are not quite as stupid as you think, and we know that both parties are being equally troublesome. So your elephant pins or donkey t-shirts aren’t going to convince us that you are not at fault.

Most likely it will be in the polls that we will deal with you and replace you with other folks. But we’ve all been reading a lot of the Founding Fathers lately, and very few of them traveled to talk to Members of Parliament or waited for a new king. They became men of action. These days, there’s plenty of women of action as well.

So quit watching movie clips or berating news reporters. Deal with the immediate crisis and then take long-term, effective action. Close the loopholes that allow companies to ship jobs overseas and book profits overseas so they don’t pay taxes.

Quit spending money upon money for programs that do nothing or only benefit a few. Honor our promises: the debt, Social Security and Medicare. Defend our nation: strong, reasonable defense spending and border security. Promote the economy: in any area that can exist with regulation, cut it out. The states can regulate based on what people are more willing to pay for in that state.

Then, if you have to raise taxes on everyone, do it. You can start with my income bracket: those of us that pay next to nothing or even get refunds without paying. Try eliminating that. You could try the flat-tax ideas or even just simplified, graduated: first $50k, no tax; $50k-250k, 10%; everything above: 20%. Just a thought.

Doug