It's Not Just The Budget

Almost anyone can tell you that the budget debate and the debate on the debt ceiling are complicated. Now that they are tied together, the complications multiply but that's only a part of the story. There are underlying concerns that affect all sides of the negotiations.

There are two additional issues that are less obvious. The first is that this debate is simply a proxy for the decades-old argument about the size and function of government. That philosophical disagreement will be the subject of a future blog.

The Lincoln Memorial
Image via Wikipedia

The second under-the-radar issue is the impact the negotiations will have on the 2012 federal elections. There will be some resolution in the budget and debt stand-off and it may or may not happen before August 2nd. Either way, it appears there will be a definite "winner"  and a definite "loser" among political parties. In this case it may not matter which side has the best ideas; the party that wins the showdown will almost certainly have a real advantage in the next elections.

Caylee's Law Would Be Just That - A Law Just For Caylee

It seems that some well-meaning legislators in my home state of Georgia are considering legislating and enacting "Caylee's Law" to avoid an occurrence similar to the recent case in Florida. The law would make it a felony for parents, caretakers or legal guardians to fail to report a child missing within 24 hours of the time they become aware the child is gone.

As you probably know from the ad nauseum coverage and analysis of the Casey Anthony trial in Florida, Caylee's mother (Casey) failed to report her child missing for a month. Many of the "legal experts" and analysts believe that Ms. Anthony was found not guilty of murder because of a lack of physical evidence directly caused by the amount of time it took to find her daughter's body. In essence, some believe Ms. Anthony's failure to report her daughter missing allowed her to literally get away with murder.

If Florida had a version of Caylee's Law on the books would it have mattered? It certainly wouldn't have mattered for Caylee. Whoever killed Caylee wasn't deterred by Florida's death penalty, so an additional, lesser penalty would not have an effect. And that brings us to the crux of the matter.

Shared Sacrifice - Really? Let's Do It!

The calls from the Democrats such as President Barack Obama is for "shared sacrifice" and Harry Reid (D-Fantasyland) has introduced a resolution on the "Sense of the Senate" regarding Shared Sacrifice. In Harry's resolution he cherry picks some facts contrasting the middle class with the wealthiest one percent of Americans. It's typical class warfare and why I feel absolutely entitled to refer to Democrats as "socialists."

Sadly for poor Harry, he just doesn't understand that he's calling for what the TEA Party and other small-government conservatives want: Shared Sacrifice. The difference is that conservatives want shared sacrifice from the real fat cat in this country - the federal government.

Democrats and the Art of Doing Nothing

Democrats have raised doing nothing to its highest form of art. If one steps back and simply looks - with a nonpartisan eye - at what they haven't done and the elegance with which they have not done it; it's amazing. And now Democrats proclaim that doing nothing has won them a US House seat in New York.

Poor Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI)! He thought the way to get ahead was to work on budgets that would realistically resolve our debt crisis with the least possible pain to the economy. Apparently it doesn't work that way, but he still gets the blame. 

Congressman Paul Ryan

We all know that entitlements have to be reformed. In fact, while Democrats were leisurely doing as little as possible, they did take the time to criticize Republicans for not taking on entitlements because the entitlement programs are such a large part of the budget. In fact the Democrats, when they could be bothered, ridiculed the earlier GOP budget reform plans as "not serious" because social security, medicare and medicaid were not the focus of those new budget plans.

Let us take a moment and recall the 2010 budget when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. That budget was a masterpiece of the current Democrat strategy. It was flawless; it angered almost no one and allowed Democrats to continue spending money like a Kennedy while not a one of them had to commit to a vote. That's right; there was no vote because there was no budget. Yes, yes, I know the law requires a budget, but when the media holds you harmless for doing nothing, why buck the trend?