It's in the Congressional record, if you don't believe me!

Wednesday – August 3, 2011

It’s in the Congressional record, if you don’t believe me!

Many people who visit my site on the internet only know me by the stories, the facts and the words I use. Most of what I write just comes to me when I sit down to start the FORUM each day. However, sometimes, I look up pertinent dates in history and sometimes I listen to the news for inspiration. And then sometimes somebody gives me a story about histories record. Today, I have a story that my twin brother, Mark, told me about. He told me about a speech that Senator Everett Dirksen gave on the Senate floor which was entered into the Congressional record in June of 1965.

Most of you who know me by the words I write don’t know that my brother Mark is my identical twin. He is older and wiser than me - by only 8 short minutes. My brother and I have been through thick and thin together. My twin and I have some great stories about growing up - this includes all the twin stuff that only twins can understand. I love my brother, so I am dedicating this FORUM to him, because of the story he told me about as he read yesterday’s FORUM.

Yesterday’s FORUM was titled: “There’s sense and then there are cents.” I related the title to Benjamin Franklin, his life and the times he lived. I wrote about the sense he had, and the stories he told about how to save the cents you have. These stories are still pertinent today. The early patriots had for the first time in their lives their own money, because of the liberty, the freedom and their new found independence that Franklin’s signature was in part responsible for.

Yesterday was also the 235 anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence that holds Franklin’s signature today.

Today’s FORUM, and the story I am referencing , is about how government through the laws that are passed will always try to take a bit of your liberty, a bit of your freedom and a bit of the independence that we are supposed to enjoy and pass down to our posterity.

Today, our debt limit will rise to over 16 trillion dollars because of the debt deal the President signed. Today, the Republicans are being blamed, because it is perceived that the Tea Party caused the crisis over what was normally a done deal before it got to the president’s desk. It was the Tea Party who had the good sense to question the spending and question the sense in raising the debt ceiling by that much without any assurances of paying down the cents that caused the debt crisis in the first place. Vice President Biden even called the Tea Party members in the House “terrorists.”

Today, the Democrats are trying to gain the high ground, because of the Senate’s action with their bi-partisan approach. The president said: “We have avoided default”. This may be true, for now, but there will be another debt ceiling crisis after the election of 2012. Our government has once again kicked the can down the road and we will once again be forced to pick up the tab on that “can” as it continues to be kicked down that same road.

All the while, the President has escaped the scrutiny that should have been the story of the day. Record levels of unemployment, a falling stock market all add up to uncertainty. Many of the nation’s companies are not expanding and creating jobs here, because they do not have confidence in the economy here today. The president has once again escaped all the scrutiny that should have been focused on him today.

The president’s birthday is this Thursday but he will celebrate it in Chicago today. The president will be given campaign donations as birthday gifts tonight at fundraisers for him. This president and his party should now be made irrelevant to the issues that today presents.

The story that my brother told me about was this: In 1965, the raising of our debt ceiling was also an issue and there was also a public debate. The ceiling was a huge $328 billion dollars then. Senator Everett Dirksen, a Republican and a conservative, was against raising the debt ceiling and questioned the sense of doing so, because he new the value of cents. Dirksen was, in his day, the conscience of the Senate. He was not only a proponent of civil rights legislation; he authored much of that legislation in the 60’s. He said: “a billion here, a billion there pretty soon your talking about real money.” Though he did not create these words, the quote is attributed to him as its author.

In June of 1965, Dirksen took to the floor of the Senate and, in his special way, told two stories that reflected the scope and the concern of his time over the debt. Yesterday, I asked where are the Franklin’s now, in the 60’s we came close in that spirit but today our leaders have failed to put the concerns of a nation into words that matter. In 1965 the debt ceiling was a staggering 328 billion dollars today 46 years later that amount is just a drop in the bucket. Today the government spends 100 billion dollars every 10 days!

The Senator, in his gruff style, was known in the Senate as “the Master of Ooze.” The story my brother told me about are the two stories the Senator told, they are:

"As I think of this bill, and the fact that the more progress we make the deeper we go into the hole, I am reminded of a group of men who were working on a street. They had dug quite a number of holes. When they got through, they failed to puddle or tamp the earth when it was returned to the hole, and they had a nice little mound, which was quite a traffic hazard.
"Not knowing what to do with it, they sat down on the curb and had a conference. After a while, one of the fellows snapped his fingers and said, ‘I have it. I know how we will get rid of that overriding earth and remove the hazard. We will just dig the hole deeper.'" [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].

On the same occasion, Dirksen relied on yet another "spending" story, one he labeled "cat in the well":"One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?' "Johnny worked assiduously with his slate and slate pencil for quite a while, and then when the teacher came down and said, ‘how are you getting along?' Johnny said, ‘Teacher, if you give me another slate and a couple of slate pencils, I am pretty sure that in the next 30 minutes I can land that cat in hell.' "If some people get any cheer out of a $328 billion debt ceiling, I do not find much to cheer about concerning it." [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].

These words and these stories tell of a time when caution was permitted to be recognized and when people were not demonized for having the sense to be cautious about the cents they were committing to the nation’s debt. As we relate these two stories to today’s story, caution was not permitted to rule the day, because of a President who has now placed us in a deeper hole which is now closer to H***. A few more trillion and a few more slate pencils, but who’s counting?
My twin brother Mark is pretty smart. My twin brother and I are reflection’s of eachother!

Gregory C. Dildilian
Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives

A footnote: Sense and cents counted in yesterday’s world. In today’s world, our government spends trillions with no sense of responsibility for the cents. I guess some would say we have come along way. But the question I have is with all the proof about the failed premises of the liberal, how can they still be permitted to be relevant? “But the basic difficulty still remains: It is the expansion of Federal power, about which I wish to express my alarm. How easily we embrace such business.” Senator Everett Dirksen