HERE WE GO AGAIN!

                It seems like every couple of months we sit and watch as one political party or the other attempts to extort and hold hostage the opposing party, demanding one thing or another .Always in an attempt to secure future election victories. The pundits, politicians and experts explain it away as business as usual in D.C...  I don’t accept that explanation, and try to wrap your brilliant minds around this; the vast majority of regular Americans don’t accept it either.  We know what the game is, we know that regardless of how the self inflicted crisis is resolved, members of congress will still have health care, they will still receive their pensions, and their financial security is all but assured.  It must be easy to vote against health care for the poor, benefits for our soldiers and our elderly when it doesn’t directly affect you.  If the tea party keeps congress from raising the debt ceiling in their latest attempt to defund or block the Affordable Care Act, which they affectionately refer to as Obamacare, will they still receive their paychecks, will they still have the best health care money can buy, will their pensions still be guaranteed? I think we all know the answer to that question.  If those “entitlements” could be stripped from members of congress as easily as congress is willing to strip them from the people who need them most, would they so adamantly adhere to their sacred ideologies? I think we know the answer to that question as well.

                Let us ordinary Americans imagine for a minute an America where we the people, D.C. outsiders   vote on a minimum wage or “living wage” for members of congress.  Where we get to vote on their health care package, and whether or not to cut their pensions based on how well Wall Street is doing.  We can assemble panels of mathematicians and actuaries ,label them with some official sounding alphabet soup titled agency ,all with their own politically motivated  agendas ,in order to determine whether  the country can afford to pay them. Then we could break it to them via press conference that we just don’t have the money to pay their well deserved salaries. Or better yet, we can base their pay on their performance.  We can tally up a list of actual accomplishments during each members tenure in congress and tie it directly to their compensation package. Exactly how many campaign promises have you fulfilled versus how many you made in order to get the job? How much time have you spent trying to raise money for your political war chest? We can deduct that right off the top.  Get nothing done-get no benefits.  How tan do you think Speaker John Boehner would look?  How many days would he spend lazily pursuing his passion for golf if the threat of a possible government shut down and default actually affected him?  The fact is that it won’t affect him or any other members of congress financially.  Allowing the country to default would undoubtedly damage the economy; even blue collar brains like mine can understand the ramifications of such a selfish move.  All the evidence would seem to support not playing with our country’s economy as a future campaign slogan, and until the women and men that make up our congress have their own economies tied to the economy the rest of us live with, nothing will change.  This whole episode reminds me of the movie Titanic, only in this version; Billy Zane’s character is played by congress, and he is on the bridge shouting “Faster...Faster”. Billy knows he has a seat in the life raft, while the rest of us are in steerage hoping someone hears our pleas.   How many times are we going to watch this scene play out before we all yell “CUT!”?

                In an effort to be clear and of course not wanting to offend the wrong people, I feel I should do two things. The first is to explain my usage and definition of “regular or ordinary” Americans, which is very simple; those Americans that are not involved in the dysfunction in Washington D.C., but are expected to live with the consequences of that dysfunction. And the second is; to make sure the right people are offended, which is also simple; everyone who doesn’t fit into the definition of “ordinary Americans”.