Curmudgeon's Corner

Drinking From A Firehose...

Posted by Al Campbell on April 17, 2009

Economy, Healthcare, Political, Quality of Life, Taxes, U.S.

This old term suggests the picture in our mind's eye of a person, mouth open, thirsting for a drink, and unable to get any water to drink due to the extreme force of the stream.  Instead, the person risks being swept off his or her feet, still thirsting, soaked to the skin and lying in a puddle.

I feel much the same and have almost since President Obama took the oath of office.  I hadn't voted for the man but he was now my president and I wanted him to succeed in our behalf.

The firehose stream of changes is overwhelming to me, and I try to stay current on things political. I can only try to imagine how overwhelmed those citizens who try to avoid politics in any form must be feeling today.

This president is tossing out new programs on an almost daily basis.  They all are made to sound as though we'll surely go down in flames if they're not approved and enacted by next week Tuesday.  They must be built in non-public meetings because they are so important and because debate would simply slow the process.

This president is proposing significant amounts of new spending when it was he who told us that he would solve the over-spending of the past.  He tells us of all the money he has already saved and yet those numbers are almost always suspect at best, and phony at worst.  He is trying to create a new public health program on top of Medicare and Medicaid both of which are hopelessly mired in debt and threatening to sink our economy.  The unfunded obligations of Medicare alone will sink the economy over the next decade or two at the most.  And this is simply one of many such "new foundation" programs he touts day after day.

Just as we begin to get our collective heads wrapped around one set of fallacious claims, we are beset with another...and another...and another.  And the press is either overwhelmed as are we, or it is complicit in the process.  And, he has accomplices in the form of his Democrat friends in Congress.

All these people are adults and have been involved in our country's governing for many years.  We seldom 'unelect' people so the bulk have been around for some time.  If you and me can ferret out the soft underbellies of these claimed "new foundation" programs, then our elected officials can do so as well...if they were but to choose to do so rather than to acquiesce to the new Messiah's wishes.

There seems some hope in that there are now a handful of Democrats who seem to have found their footing and who are beginning to slow down the process as they dissect and dissemble the various claims.  Sen. Max Baucus is one.  The danger will not go away, however, and that is the reason that you and me need to get involved and stay involved.  We must let Congress know that we are very serious about the concerns we voice over the firehose stream of new spending and program changes.

The earlier remark by Rahm Emanuel to the effect that a good crisis can't be permitted to go to waste seemed almost humorous initially.  It has taken on a sinister and dark meaning as I watch these proposals for a new "public health plan" and gun control and tax upon tax and "green" programs that require we use more ethanol and on and on and on.

I'm thirsty but I can't seem to get a drop satisfaction.

By the way, we have a similar problem in Wisconsin albeit on a smaller scale.  It is almost a footrace to see whether the governor or the president can bankrupt us first.