A National Discussion

 

 

"One day we will all wake up and wonder how we got into such a jam..."

Yesterday, when I arrived home from picking up a couple of grocery items for dinner, the garage door would not open. It has been like that for a while, and seems to get worse every month. After forcing the door open by hand and getting the car in the garage, I opened the service door into the house. The door almost came off in my hands. It is so rusty, the hinges are coming off. Once inside, I turned on the overhead light. It sparked. It has been doing that for over a year now, and I constantly worry about a fire. As I put the milk and eggs in the fridge, I noticed the thermometer in the fridge was still close to 50. Food does not last long in those temps.

I found my wife upstairs lying under a couple of blankets as these days the house is always cold. We have needed new windows for years. "We have to do something" I told her. "Everything is falling apart! This place is a mess!" She looked up and me and nodded her head. "You are right dear. Just tell me where the money coming from. We have squandered our savings on all kinds of nonsense, and our credit cards are maxed out. You tell me how we can afford to fix anything these days!"

The above story is of course, an analogy to what is currently happening to our country. Yesterday in Detroit, a large chunk of the city suffered a black out. It was a mess, and that part of the city ground to a halt.  Last year, Detroit was without water for a while. Our country is in desperate need of repair. People we have elected to serve us have ended up only serving themselves. Our tax dollars have been squandered, we borrow like drunken sailors, and our national debt has now crested $18T. Bottom line - we have mismanaged our country. Not by a little, but by quite a bit.

So what do we do? How do we spend our resources more wisely in this country? How do we fix out national debt before it fixes us? How do we upgrade our national power grid before something awful and catastrophic happens? How do we upgrade our water mains in our cities to keep sinkholes and breaks from happening? I could go on and on. But what do we need first? A national discussion on our spending and priorities.

This is not rocket science folks. I bet most of us do it at home. Plan things out, budgeting, savings - things like that. My wife and I have already started our discussions for 2015. How much (and to whom) we want to donate, what needs to be fixed or upgraded, and yes - fun and travel also. But my point is this - before one dime is budgeted or spent, we have a discussion. Affordability and priorities are always discussed in great detail.

Some say we need a national discussion on race relations in our country. That may be true. We also need a national discussion on the future of NASA, our purpose of our military, fixing our debt, and upgrading our infrastructure. We can't just go from year to year, spending and taxing like "Willy Nilly" is in charge.

Yes, we are in a mess right now. But we are all in this mess together. Let's talk about it. I am ready. Let the conversation begin now.