Our Federal Government is paralyzed by inaction. Faced with the largest deficit in history caused by their gluttonous spending Congress continues to argue over crumbs.
A couple of weeks ago the General Accounting Office, a non-partisan federal agency, released a 350 page report that identified $200 billion in government waste. Most of that waste is caused by duplication in federal programs. For example, the GAO found 82 different programs for monitoring teachers, 80 programs for economic development and 15 different federal agencies with food safety programs. In other words the government has become so fat it not only can’t see its toes, the right hand can’t see what the left hand is doing.
If you think that is wrong just consider this; every time we have a problem government’s first response is not to identify which agency dropped the ball on their oversight responsibility, it’s to create a new agency to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The result is a dizzying array of regulatory agencies that are paralyzing real progress while failing to actually complete their assigned responsibility.
And the Federal Government is not alone in this waste brought on by the inaction of its own bloat. Last week KING 5 news released a story of how it has taken 14 years and $400 million of taxpayer dollars to study what to do about the 520 bridge. KING 5 points out that adjusting the cost of the original bridge for inflation it would cost $245 million to build that same bridge today. The state has not poured a yard of concrete on the new bridge but has already spent nearly double that amount. It is a just another classic example of how a paralysis of analysis wastes taxpayer money without improving the outcome.
The bottom line here is that taxpayers are tired of paying to fatten the pig of government. The last election was a clear message from voters that the old politics of tax and spend must change. It’s time to put the government on a starvation diet. Cutting $4 billion from the Federal Budget is not only unacceptable it is criminally irresponsible. It doesn’t matter which party is resisting meaningful change here. Those who did not get the message that voters are demanding radical change will find themselves looking for work.
What is needed isn’t a scalpel but a meat cleaver. And if the current crop of elected representatives doesn’t get that then shut the government down. After all, they haven’t been able to accomplish anything of substance. Maybe if they are forced to take an unpaid vacation they might come back with a different attitude.
