Oregon Magazine

Government Fiscal Blueprint
by Art Hyland, Contributing Editor

Deficits. Stimulus. Federal takeover of economy. Unsustainable Debt. Dollar erosion. Precious metals fever. Economic uncertainty. Constitutional erosion. Personal emergency food, ammunition & fuel.

That’s just a partial list of subjects for mental depression these days. In fact, the amount of barriers to a return to the placid United States (or world) we used to know has just about everyone including experts wondering how or what can be done to avoid a total breakdown of society. The unthinkable has become a common thought: is some sort of world or civil war inevitable? Or is that convention too passe, being replaced with something even more dreadful?

Well, before we decide to collectively jump off the closest bridge, or speed off cliffs in our vehicle of choice, there are steps being taken to solve all the problems above. No, liberals in Congress haven’t been secretly meeting with the President to actually do what’s necessary (they won’t), but strangely, corrective actions are being taken in certain liberal jurisdictions, and it will eventually (have to) bubble up to all others including the federal government.

(Photo: Central Falls R.I. mass transit)

But first, take a look at the top hit you see if you google "Central Falls, RI"

This “Bright Future” city went 83% for Obama in 2008. Yet the President decided to instead visit Cannon Falls, (MN) where he only got 53% of the vote. Given the tremendous support he got from Central Falls, why would he not choose it over some small midwest town who barely went for him?

Rhode Island’s Obama-loving city is bankrupt.

They had adopted the full meal deal of family- and prevailing- wage jobs, the exact philosophy of our president and his party. But the president’s handlers decided it would be prudent to avoid the city for now. Just not the right time, you know. That’s too bad, because all liberals, especially our socialistic president, need to learn what has to be done to get serious about fixing government (assuming that’s what they really wish to do). The president could have met with Central Falls’ Robert G. Flanders, the city’s new employee.

Its RECEIVER.

This person would have told our man-child president of the steps he is taking to get the city back in the business it is supposed to be in, which is governing within its means. Mr. Flanders probably wouldn’t have introduced him to the many unions of the city however, because Mr. Flanders recently presided over a city hall meeting where his agenda included the following specific items listed for automatic adoption:

6. City’s Chapter 9 Roadmap:

A. Eligibility

B. Rejection of collective bargaining agreements and employment contracts

C. Filing and confirmation of a plan of debt adjustment

D. Public policy need for expediency

Note item “B” above. This unusual measure was included because, “The City would be unable to fund any other service or expense, including public safety, public works or debt service for nearly five years in order to fund…” JUST the City’s pension and health care benefits, which were so generously negotiated over the years with the powerful city unions by friendly city leaders of this very cozy, Democrat-controlled community. The foxes (relatives of wolves) had long been in charge of the hen house. Mr. Obama would have understood the Central Falls foxes, having been one all his political life, so perhaps that’s why he wanted to go to a small (non-bankrupt) Minnesota town instead, where he wouldn’t be recognized in his presidential (sheep’s) clothing.

Experience is the best teacher

What lessons does Central Falls have for our nation’s uncounted cities, counties and even many states who are near or in the same financial predicament? Well, the first is, the unions that squeezed them into their financial box could not and did not come to any negotiated adjustments to their excessive contracts in order to help the city avoid the necessity of bankruptcy. In other words, in negotiations prior to the city’s fall from grace, the unions, despite facing the certainty of reductions to existing workers salaries AND retiree’s pension payments, would not agree to any realistic reductions. Instead, they continued to demand the impossible because that’s what they had gotten for decades and were used to it. Their intransigence is typical of the liberal mentality that somehow, some way, the future will be covered because it always has been. And their enablers, longtime majority liberal elected representatives, didn’t know how to use the word “no” because they had expunged it from their vocabulary decades ago.

The above scenario is currently in some stage of hidden display in many of our nation’s jurisdictions, including states. Interestingly, there doesn’t exist a legal bankruptcy option for states, but then there wasn’t one originally for the city of Central Falls either. The Rhode Island legislature had to quickly enact a process to allow the city to legally proceed. Even the legislature had no option, because the state itself isn’t in the best financial condition, for reasons we can all guess by

now. Even Senator, now Vice President Joe Biden could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. I’m not sure he could ever have put anything together in his life, but the smart voters of Rhode Island and its “city with a bright future” voted for him for over thirty years. The future arrived and Biden is now Vice President. That says just about everything.

(photo G. Custer -- political ancestor of Joe Biden)

Perhaps this year or early next, Congress will have to enact similar legislation when a state reaches their final fiscal chasm. Look sometime soon for Michigan, Illinois or California to stand before the abyss, kicking and screaming, unwilling to fix their problems internally, finally forced by legal pressures that will hand the responsibilities they squandered over to a receiver. Hopefully the Republican House will not cave to the inevitable liberal demands for bailing out totally failed states. The inability of the majority party (Democrats) to say “no” must lead to the inevitability of a legal receiver who WILL say “no” because there isn’t another word as operative.

Whether it’s liberal city officials blindly granting unsustainable salary and pension benefits to their friends the unions, or liberal Congressmen in Washington D.C. blindly appropriating trillions for their uncounted friends, they all gravitated to the power and joy of writing checks guaranteed by citizens unknown and unborn. Government unions have been running with the philosophy that all their government employers are permanent because direct local and indirect federal taxpayers will always pay the bills no matter what. Its a sad commentary on the excesses of liberal governing. Although too many conservative politicians have not fought hard enough to restrain or demand fiscal responsibility, it is interesting to note how many states are NOT in trouble, and how all of these are politically conservative. Numbers do not lie. True budgeting requires the willingness to resist the joy of giving other people’s money away, an addiction inherent with our social justice liberals within the Democrat party, with the help of too many Republicans as well.

Okay, local and state governments in trouble have a path, a difficult one, the screaming meemi tsunami of bankruptcy--but an actual solution, but what about the worst offender of all: our gargantuan spender of all spenders, the Federal Government? The answer can only lie with electing absolute fiscal hawks, because there doesn’t exist a Federal Government bankruptcy receiver option.

(photo : a typical present-day American fiscal hawk)

We HAVE to get control of our federal government spending and the debt it has accumulated. Pouring more stimulus money into a fire created by stimuluses and deficit spending over the years is insane. It can’t be the solution because it defies logic, if logic be the language of numbers, which it is.

So 2012 becomes perhaps the last chance for this nation to reverse its wayward fiscal ways. We must elect a president and legislative politicians who know how to actually say “no” and say “no” over and over, in order to start the painful but required process of paying down federal and state debt by vastly reducing government expenditures at all levels. We must learn to save up for big expenditures rather than spend now and pay later. That gravy train is over. And it must be done without increasing tax rates. At the federal level, we must adopt a flat tax, or variant thereof, where EVERYONE pays something, even if it’s a can of tuna, at a 15-18% flat rate. We must release the power of fiscal and economic stability so our business men and women can plan, create, prosper and ultimately contribute to repairing the mess created by the socialistic engineers of Congress and this president.

There are citizens all over this nation who just want the government to be responsible, efficient and limited. It’s the way of the Constitution, a rather straightforward, wonderful document that didn’t require 2500 pages. Simple, powerful, honest and free.

Tea Party Forever.

ooo