Greg Awtry

President Obama and the U.S. Congress are very good at raising taxes and spending money. They are very bad at reducing spending and lowering taxes.

When it comes to the way Congress manages the country’s fiscal affairs I used to think they were dumb as a box of rocks. I no longer think that. I now think they are cowards.

We spend $10 billion a day and have to borrow $4 billion a day, and there is no end in sight for this nation-wrecking insanity. It doesn’t take a congressman/woman more than a couple seconds to know this is not sustainable if we are to survive as a sovereign nation. They know it; we know it and I think they know we know it.

The problem is we spend too much and even though they know how to fix it, they are afraid to because it will most likely cost them their jobs.

As I said, they aren’t dumb, they are cowards, afraid to suggest the cuts that are necessary and then have to come home and tell everyone Grandma’s social security income is going down.

Or, how will they explain that unemployment payments are going to be cut to six months instead of two years? Or, how are they going to explain that the military’s budget is going to be cut because we can no longer afford to be deployed all over the world?

Or, how are they going to tell the folks on welfare we can no longer support those capable of supporting themselves? Or, how can they say we can no longer afford any more grants or earmarks?

How can they tell people we have a government we can no longer afford and practically every single program and service needs to be drastically reduced, knowing this will upset practically everyone?

Well, the answer is, they can’t, because they love their jobs more than they do our country. There is no other way to explain it.

We can’t point the finger only at Democrats or only at Republicans. Neither party wants to lead when it comes to cutting spending. They have tried their best to pawn this off on someone else.

First they handed it off to the Bowles and Simpson Debt Commission. They hoped Bowles and Simpson would do the “dirty work” and they did; only President Obama and Congress rejected the suggested cuts. (Translation: They are cowards.)

Next, they invented the “Super Committee” and asked them to do the dirty work. After months of meetings, they couldn’t agree either, and as a result of their failure, they cornered themselves in with a tactic they called the “Sequester.”

This would make automatic cuts, thus avoiding any individual politician being forced to vote for any individual spending reductions. Now they are all trying to change their very own sequester rules to avoid making cuts. (Translation: They are cowards.)

With my apologies to Kenny Rogers’ and his song, “Cowards of the County,” his lyrics point out, “Now it won’t mean you’re weak if you turn the other cheek. I hope you’re old enough to understand. Son, you don’t have to fight to be a man.”

If you remember that song, Tommy stayed clear of fights, but finally, when what meant most to him was in danger, he realized, “Papa, I sure hope you understand, sometimes you gotta fight to be a man.”

So, we say to the President and the United States Congress, “That time has come!” The things We The People love the most, our country, our American Dream, our children and grandchildren are in danger.

We elected you to take our fight to Washington and to put our nation back on solid financial footing so our country, our dreams and our children can enjoy the great American blessings our parents’ responsibly left for us. And to be quite honest with you, we don’t give a damn whether you are re-elected or not. Only you care about that. We care about our country!

Our parents and grandparents were not cowards. They broke their backs building this nation. They died for this nation. The least you can do is lead the fight to restore the promise they left for you.

Your mission is difficult, we know that. We aren’t dumb either. You would have to cut over a trillion a year, or raise taxes over a trillion a year, or some combination of the two to balance our budget. What’s your plan? We don’t know, do we? Are you afraid if you tell us what you are going to cut, we won’t vote for you?

Its time for you to lead, and risk your political future for the good of the country. Stop waiting for others to tell us what needs to be cut, and come out with a list of cuts and/or revenue increases that will stop us from going into debt so far that it can never be repaid … if we haven’t gone there already.

You know, when somebody loves something as much as we love our country, it would be nice to hear you tell us exactly what you would cut, then turn to us and say, “I sure hope you understand, sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.”

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It was hot out last Tuesday. I was driving around downtown York on my way to the City Auditorium to vote in the primary election. As I drove by Grand Central Foods, I saw Opie and Aunt Bea sitting on a bench eating ice cream cones. Right across the street, the police station, and I wondered what Andy and Barney were up to on Election Day in our town.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t Aunt Bea and Opie sitting on that bench, and maybe Andy and Barney weren’t really in the station. But I really was driving around downtown York on my way to vote.

As I pulled up to the Auditorium there was a line of pickups parked along 6^th Street. I couldn’t help but notice there were several with the windows down. On my radio I was listening to a national talk show and somehow the two didn’t seem to go together, an urban loud-mouth trashing our country, and hard working pickup driving Americans taking time out of their busy day to exercise our right to vote.

It was right then and there I realized the enormous disconnect.

On one side of the disconnect we have Washington. Many of you have been there. It is an island of sorts, surrounded by the beltway, a ten-lane Interstate more often than not crawling at the pace of a York city street cleaner. Inside the beltway you have large stone buildings filled with bureaucrats, and a Capitol building filled with politicians. Running down the center is the “Mall”, with the Reflection Pool as the centerpiece, flanked by monuments and museums, recognizing our greatest Americans, our greatest sacrifices, and amazing history.

On the other side of the disconnect, we have us. And by us, I mean pickup driving farmers, moms and dads working jobs, maybe two jobs, trying to make a living. It is a world far removed from Washington, because here in the heartlands, we make things and we grow things. In Washington, they talk about things.

In Washington, they make rules. In York, we follow rules. In Washington they work for us. In York, it seems like we work for them. In Washington, they spend our hard earned money. In York, we send them our hard earned money.

In York we balance our budget. In Washington, they not only don’t balance a budget, they won’t even pass one! In York we support our schools. In Washington they tell us how to run our schools. In York, we don’t burden our children with debt. In Washington they burden all our children with generations of debt.

Folks, we have a disconnect and it is a growing problem in our nation.

Washington is broken. Do you realize there about six billion people on earth? Do you realize we (the U.S.A.) have to borrow about four billion dollars a day? That’s just short of a dollar a day for every single human being on earth! Do you realize there is no plan to stop this?

We have a choice to make.

We can either continue to let Washington squander 230 years of the most incredible nation-building in human history, risking the future of our children and grandchildren, or we can demand Washington stop this insanity, and return our country to fiscal solvency. There are countries in the world, like Greece, showing us what’s in store for us if we continue down this path. We see it. Why doesn’t Washington?

So Washington, if you are listening, remember this. You don’t create wealth, you consume wealth. You don’t make commerce, you regulate it. You don’t grow the food, farmers do. You don’t educate children, teachers do. You don’t drill for oil, make cars, build homes, or construct roads. The people do all that. You don’t produce products, create profits, or pay taxes. The people do.

Washington, you talk. That’s all you do. And it’s time you start talking (and working) together to create an environment that will restore opportunities allowing the people to do what they do best, work, build, grow, and protect our way of life. Washington, you didn’t make a great country, the people did.

As much as I may long for the innocent days of Mayberry, I realize those times are gone, but the greatness of this country is not. Washington is broken. They have lost sight that their power never did reside in Washington. It lives in the people, in York, Nebraska, and a thousand other Yorks. Yes, Washington is broken, we are not.

As I left the Auditorium, it felt good that I voted. I had to drive by Grand Central Foods again on the way back to work at the newspaper office. Opie and Aunt Bea were gone. There wasn’t a single police car in front of the station. We had a newspaper to put out that night, and people had all gone back to work. It was Election Day and we have a nation to build.

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There is no possible way we can tax ourselves back to prosperity. Everyone knows that we will have to drastically reduce spending. Nobody wants to seriously address the inevitable cuts. Not even Paul Ryan who has proposed two consecutive budgets in the House and although they are a step in the right direction, neither comes close to the heavy lifting necessary to get the debt under control.

President Obama is AWOL. Yes, AWOL on the entire debt crisis. He is more than just Commander in Chief. He is also the CEO of the entire federal government. Any CEO worth his salt must know something about budgets. But not this president. He hasn’t a clue.

Take his last two budgets. He had trillion dollar deficits in each. He had the insulting nerve to submit them to the American people. Last year the Senate voted on Obama’s budget. The vote was 0 to 97. Not one single “Yes” vote.

This year the vote went to the House. The result, 0 to 414. How’s that for fiscal leadership from the Whitehouse? If Obama was the head coach (and he is) and went 0 and 511 for his last two years, I think people would be looking for a new coach, right?

Listening to the President one would think the answer is to tax the rich under his make-believe Buffett Rule. His plan would add $4.7 billion in additional taxes each year. That would fix the entire problem, right?

Folks, we spend $10 billion each and every day. In order to do that we have to borrow about $4 billion each and every day. So the President’s answer to our fiscal insanity, the Buffett Rule, would cover what we borrow for one day! We can’t tax our way to prosperity!

Why can’t we fix it? Incumbents! The Washington “ins” want reelected to their royal positions. They believe if they were to do the inevitable (drastically cut spending) they would not get reelected. They are too afraid to do what every single one of us do all the time, which is say, “We can’t afford it.”

Washington and the representatives we sent there to do the hard work are not doing it. They have found it is a lot easier to spend money that to cut spending. They have found the way to get reelected is to promise things we can’t afford and send the bill to our children and grandchildren.

Every parent and grandparent should demand this stops now. Don’t vote for anyone who doesn’t make it crystal clear how they intend to stop taking money from children.

We are adults. We can handle the hard news. We work hard to give our kids better opportunities, better lives and a better nation than was left to us, and now, we have a slew of politicians taking that away. I don’t want my children and grandchildren spending the rest of their lives paying for our excess.

If a candidate or current politician is unable to explain exactly how they will balance our federal budget, then I consider them no more than a common thief who has their hands in my children’s piggy bank. And what, I ask you, is lower than a person who would steal from children?

President Obama won’t change. The United States Senate, under Harry Reid’s leadership won’t change. For crying out loud, they haven’t passed a budget in over three years in the Senate and Obama’s budget is so bad even the Democrats won’t vote for it. They are common thieves, and we pay them for it!

Meanwhile, the Republican controlled House of Representatives has voted and passed two budgets, only to have them sent to Harry Reid’s black hole of intelligent legislation. It doesn’t take much more than a box of rocks between our ears to see where the problem lies.

We have a primary in a couple weeks, and a national election in six months. If you want to vote for more thieves, go ahead. That’s what so great about this country. It’s not a crime to be stupid. As for me, I choose to negate your vote and elect someone who will work day and night to stop robbing my grandchildren of dollars they haven’t even earned yet.

Mothers, fathers and grandparents, I urge you to go to the polls on May 15^th unlike never before and help change the nation. Then do it again in November. Then let’s never allow the people we hired to steal from our children again. It’s should be a crime.

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Budgetless in the U.S.A.

President Obama is batting a thousand on his last two budgets. Actually his record is 511 to 0.

Last year the U.S. Senate voted down his budget 97 to 0. Not one single Democrat, not even Harry Reid, voted to support it.

Next up was this year’s House vote; once again a unanimous vote, 414 to 0. I don’t care who you are, this has to be embarrassing.

Obamacare

Well, the Trojan horse called Obamacare finally ended up in the Supreme Court, exactly where it should have begun, the day after Pelosi said we had to pass it to know what’s in it and Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson negotiated the now vanquished Cornhusker Kickback.

Before the very first Obamacare initiative went into place and the first tax dollar was collected, our country should have tested its Constitutionality.

Democrats told us it would cost less than $1 trillion and now, before it is fully implemented, the price tag has reached an unbelievable $2.6 trillion.

Seems somebody was not very truthful with the American people. Shame on them.

Gas Pains

Near $4 a gallon and going higher? Since the 1970s and Jimmy Carter we have talked about our country’s reliance on foreign oil.

Talk is cheap. Unfortunately, gasoline is not.

Every study shows America has a lot of untapped oil. Drill baby drill but make one provision. Open up federal lands for oil leases providing the oil pumped up stays in this country, all of it, no exports on American produced oil.

If big oil wants it, that’s the deal. If they don’t want it, let the wildcatters go get it. Enough talk. Drill.

Hee Haw

Some of you may remember the variety comedy TV show Hee Haw.

It had a lot of talented performers who did their best to convince us they were just hillbillies. The part that made most folks laugh was the corn field jokes.

That is what China is doing right now. They must look at the U.S.A. and wonder if they are watching reruns of Hee Haw.

You see, we don’t have enough money, so China loans us some of theirs to run our government.

Then what do we do? We give some of it back to them calling it foreign aid! Heck, it’s so stupid even I’m laughing.

Republicans!

I would ask them, “What have you done for me lately?” They would answer, “Hey, we got you into several wars didn’t we! Even though Iraq was contained tighter than a Jack in the Box, and Afghanistan, we are fighting there too although we have yet to define what victory will be. And now we are setting our sights on Iran!”  

Republicans, embarrassed from the last time they had power and George Bush’s unprecedented spending spree, they now all run promising spending cuts.

We elected them in 2010 and they now control Congress (which is where all the spending begins), and they still spend more every year.

When the day is done, they always have some excuse for voting to spend money we don’t have.

America divided

Not since the Vietnam War have I seen the country so divided. Racial issues seem to be getting worse, not better.

Conservatives are politically stubborn, Liberals are fiscally blind and neither party is willing to work together to save our country.

People have lost confidence in the federal government for good reason and we seem to have a lack of leadership and vision.

Politics has become a soap opera of 30-second sound bites, positioning and power leaving the real work of this nation undone.

The Answer

The answer is where it has always been in America. It is the people. It is you and me.

In about six weeks we’ll have our primary election. This is the time we are asked to choose our future. How many of you will vote?

How many of you will take 10 minutes to help make a decision that will have lasting consequences on your life?

Not many.

If recent history is any indicator only about one in four will head to the voting booth.

Unfortunately, most of us will spend more time buying next week’s groceries than deciding who will help lead this country back to greatness.    

Last week I heard Tony Robbins, internationally renowned motivational speaker and advisor to many of the world’s top leaders, comment, “Americans get what they tolerate.”

How true. Sad, but true.

How much more will we tolerate?

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