As the protests in Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin concerning the collective bargaining rights of public employees continue on, I found myself thinking two things.
\nFirst, are we, as a nation, willing to accept the harsh realities of a serious budget cut?\u00a0 And, second, do we trust the people in charge enough to make the cuts?
\nYou\u2019ve heard this refrain before, but the country is in serious financial trouble.\u00a0 Our deficit is massive and growing.\u00a0 Our dollar is growing weaker by the day.\u00a0 We\u2019re in substantial debt to China and other lenders.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t change our ways in a meaningful fashion, we\u2019ll find ourselves\u2014in a number of years\u2014with a budget that is dominated by social security, medicare, interest on our debt and defense.\u00a0 We probably won\u2019t have the money to cover those four things, and if we do, there\u2019s almost no way we\u2019d be able to pay for any other function of government.
\nCuts must occur.\u00a0 It\u2019s time.\u00a0 The government, by our own desire, has grown out of control.\u00a0 The government doesn\u2019t just grow on a whim; people want it to.\u00a0 We have elected people on both sides of the aisle to give us things we want, be it more national defense or more entitlements.
\nAdd that to our government\u2019s \u201ckick the can down the road\u201d philosophy for problem solving and we find ourselves in a serious situation.\u00a0 The can won\u2019t go much further down the road.\u00a0 The time is now to make the necessary adjustments.
\nThe protests in this country aren\u2019t violent and shouldn\u2019t be.\u00a0 But it raises a question.\u00a0 In November, people in this country did seem to vote for more Libertarian-influenced people into office.\u00a0 The idea seemed to be, \u201cwe don\u2019t want to spend this kind of money anymore.\u201d\u00a0 I think most people would agree that running a gargantuan deficit is not a good thing.
\nBut what happens when the cuts come to your doorstep?\u00a0 What about when your newly elected Governor decides that removing collective bargaining rights is necessary?\u00a0 Do you just nod your head and accept it?\u00a0 People in Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin aren\u2019t.
\nShould they?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 As much as I believe that steep cuts (such as the ones offered up by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, in the neighborhood of $500 billion) are necessary, do I trust our politicians to do things in a just and uncorrupt way?
\nAs uncomfortable as it makes me feel, I think we have to.\u00a0 This is what a republic is all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the protests in Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin concerning the collective bargaining rights of public employees continue on, I found myself thinking two things. First, are we, as a nation, willing to accept the harsh realities of a serious budget cut?\u00a0 And, second, do we trust the people in charge enough to make the cuts? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5s3vR-6128","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6135,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128\/revisions\/6135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}