Time and again!

Monday – July 25, 2011

Time and again!

What does this title mean, time and again? It says a little bit about what time is and it says a little bit about how time repeats itself.

When you apply this old saying to your personal life, you might see how month after month things don’t change much. You have your bills to pay, you have the scrapes and bruises that your children come home with, you have the visits to the grocery store and the visits to the vet, if you have a dog or cat. Your 401(k) goes up and it goes down. And lastly, every week we ask the $64,000 question: am I going to be employed next week?

While time can repeat itself in our daily lives, the one thing that’s for sure is we can’t make up for lost time. The only things we can’t repeat are the days that we lose, because of indecision and bad decisions. The same can be said for Washington.

The current debt crisis is now being blamed on Speaker of the House, John Boehner. Speaker Boehner walked out of the meeting with the President last Friday, because the President “moved the goal post”, according to the Speaker. According to the President, Speaker Boehner wouldn’t sign on to additional revenue enhancers.

Time and again we see the President and the Democrats use a play on words that sounds great. My gosh - to be able to enhance revenue must be a good thing, because who wouldn’t want to enhance their own revenue? This sounds like it could be an investment opportunity! It sounds like someone else might pick up the tab! But what it really means is that the president proposed an additional tax on the rich, something that the Speaker just couldn’t live with.

The president also wanted to raise the debt ceiling until after the 2012 elections. Who wouldn’t want to put off another debt crisis until after his re-election? Time and again, it is just politics as usual.

A year ago, the president and the Democrats knew that we would be having this debate now. The problem is that they thought they would still control the House and still control the entire government. Fast forward a year and we have the stalemate we have today. Democrats control 2/3 of the government and the Republicans control 1/3, with over 68% of the people agreeing with them and their plan.

The Republicans presented a proposal. It was called Cut, Cap and Balance. They passed it in the House, only to be voted down in the democratically controlled Senate, at the behest of the democratically controlled White House. Another plan was submitted by the Senate, which favored the Liberal view of how to run a country and a government. Where has that gotten us in the last four- six years? As an example of where it has this gotten us is; the President announced on Friday that Chrysler has paid off their loan. In the bail out process, Chrysler was given to a foreign based auto maker FIAT with tax payer dollars buying it for them. We were told that in the end there would be a return on the investment. However, in the end, when the math was done, the tax payer came up short by 1.3 billion dollars. Why, because the U.S. government sold their shares in Chrysler at a loss to the Italian auto maker. Who profited? The Italian auto maker and the Italian government - the American tax payer picked up the tab! Have you heard the old adage “pretty good for government work?” This one story alone should be enough to explain why government is not a good steward of the nation’s wealth.

The president wants to raise the debt ceiling by another 2.4 trillion dollars, because he wants to spend more. The tax payer cannot afford this and the credit rating agencies who put a rating on our debt know it.

The president has once again failed in his duty to lead and to make the right decisions for the country. He knew a year ago that something had to be done to prevent this debate from occurring today. Time and again he has failed to come up with a plan and the Senate has failed, because they could have negotiated when the House came up with their proposal after all it is their responsibility to do so.

As we anxiously await the results of the Asian Market today, we also are waiting to see the results of what our markets do. This is of course related to the debt deal that Washington can’t seem to agree on, because of indecision and mostly because of the bad decisions that comes out of Washington.

Bad decisions are the result of the kind of decisions we are facing today. 16 years ago the country had an opportunity to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Time and again we visit the same questions, with the same outcome.

The president asked on Friday “where is the leadership?” My response is if there was true leadership coming from the White House, instead of the child’s play we have seen, the job would have been done right, before the desperate decisions that have to be made today.
So where do we stand this morning? You still have your bills to pay, but chances are the interest on those bills will rise. Your kids will still come home with their scrapes and bruises, but chances are the doctor bill will go up, because his expenses will rise, because his cost of doing business is rising. You will still visit the grocery store, but you will pay more at the check out line, because of inflation which simply means: an increase in the supply of currency or credit relative to the availability of goods and services, resulting in higher prices and a decrease in the purchasing power of your money. Your dog or cat will still need to see the vet, but the vet is just another doctor for the family with rising costs himself. Your 401(k) will take the hit next month, because of the sell off that might take place because of the “no deal or bad deal situation in Washington.” But what I fear most is; you will still be asking the $64,000 question: am I going to have my job next week?

Just as the S&P and Moody’s are losing faith in our credit and ability to pay our bills, business will lose faith and pull back as well. As a result, of all of this our financial rating will be down graded, because there will be no full faith and credit in the dollar and the United States any longer.

Time and again we have seen this, but not to the degree of a lowered credit rating. You can blame Congress, you can blame the Senate. You can blame the S&P and Moody’s. Blame China and the European Union. Blame George Bush. But the smart money will go to the source and that is the President of the United States. We will be better off when he is booted out of town. This is what elections are all about. The presidential election in 2012 should be about nothing else except for what happened in July of 2011.

Mr. President, per your instructions, Congress came up with a proposal, it was the first and only proposal to be passed and that is what should be negotiated. Quit moving the goal post and find your place on the field.

Gregory C. Dildilian
Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives


A footnote: Time and again we see the same stuff it never changes. Time and again we see the same characters that never change. Time and again we wish for a change. The system works; it’s the leaders who don’t work within the system. John Adams said to Horatio Gates in a letter on March 23, 1776: “I agree with you that in politics the middle way is none at all.”