It is reported in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that states and local governments have made promises they cannot keep. Considering the continuing debate in the US Congress about Social Security and Medicare and the deficit, one cannot help but wonder if this tangled web does not go even further.
Pork-barrel projects are a well-known part of doing business with politicians. We demand that our congressmen and senators "produce" and when they do not deliver, we want their livers on a stick. Yet when the pork is reported, we tend to gloss over those projects that were delivered to our home states and then cry and lament over the wasteful spending in other areas. It is easier to blame congressmen and senators from other states who have been demonized by the opposing political party and use them as the very evidence which proves that they need to go.
The truth is that our Congress is nothing more than a reflection of who we are and what we think we want. We demand the sun and the moon and the stars, and then we scream when the bill comes due. We blame Congress, and yet we have many members of both Houses who continue to be re-elected time after time. It is as if we awaken from a deep sleep only long enough to vote. Then we are only capable of making the selection that is most familiar to us. In many cases, it is the incumbent who naturally catches our eye.
If we have anyone to blame, it is only ourselves.
Promises were made years (seemingly centuries!) ago about how retirements and health care would be available to everyone; utopia was promised to us by those seeking political office, and we fell for it. Now it is time to pay the piper, and we are pretty sure "someone" is to blame; we're just not exactly sure who it is. It surely cannot be "me" - "I" only voted (that is, if "I" bothered to vote at all).
We have a deficit that seems almost surreal and a national debt that pushes a number most of us cannot begin to fathom. We are in the midst of a war fighting for our lives against an enemy that seeks every opportunity to kill and maim innocent children, and we think we are overburdened with taxes. We are facing in the very near future an uncertainty about Social Security that we refuse to talk about, and Medicare does not come close to providing for lower-income recipients who have been PROMISED that they would not want for decent and affordable medical care.
So who is responsible for fulfilling promises that should never have been made? The politicians promised us everything necessary to be elected into office, but we never bothered to ask where that money might come from. We heard only what we wanted to hear. We have been hedging a bet against a future that we secretly hoped might never come and yet somehow knew that there would be no way to avoid it.
As for me, I am looking at the man in the mirror. I am promising "him" that I will resolve to pay closer attention to what is said. I will not fall for promises that sound too good to be true. I will not believe that re-electing this person or that one will somehow solve all my problems.
I will remember that if there is anything wrong within my own world, I will have no one to blame but myself.
2 comments:
Bingo. There's a reason why politicians gather pork projects -- because it works! If cutting pork would get them re-elected, they would do that. Alas, the temptation of other people's money is too great for most.
Sad thing is that they give pork because we demand pork.
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