by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)
Sometimes I feel that people in Government with their high-class living really do forget what its like to be one of the little people (or as Bill Clinton put it so coursley… ‘Joe Sixpack’… fucker). With head Democrat Nancy Pelosi increasing her personal wealth 62% in the last year (worth 43 million) (with everyone losing their jobs and such) and head Republican John Bohener doing well too (worth 2.1 million), you have to ask yourself if these fat-cats remember what it’s like to open your electric bill and nearly crap your pants?
Just as an interesting side note: I looked at the richest members of Congress and the list is quite interesting…
Out of the top 10, 3 are Republicans… that’s funny because I was brought up to believe that it was Republicans that were the rich and greedy ones… hummmmm.
Sure you can just claim that I am creating class envy here but these are our lawmakers. These poeple are supposed to know who we are and what we feel. I doubt VERY MUCH that any of these people know what its like to live paycheck to paycheck. How can they relate to us and our needs when wehave a hundred dollars in our bank accounts and they have 400 million? Really… think about it.
So my first order for fixing the economy is to cut the pay of the members of Congress. The annual salary in 2011 is $174,000. These people should not be making more than $100,000 (if even that). Before 1789 they didn’t get paid.
Next the government needs to stop spending money in order to try to make the economy work (i.e. stimulus). I say this becasue we have seen this method utterly fail to work under Bush’s term and then again it utterly failed to work under Obama’s term.
Have you ever seen the movie ‘Dave’? It is the story of a presidental look-alike who is used to fool the nation when the real president has a fatal stroke. The look-alike begins seeing the issues the president faces with the eyes of an ‘everyday’ man and begins to do budget cutting and priority re-arranging to get things done (much to the dismay of his handlers). Ofcourse it’s not as easy as that but it makes a great point. It basically illustrates the fact that those in power are out of touch as to the real world they are making decisions about. I think lawmakers need to sit down and have a long hard think about their jobs and what is expcted of them and what this nation needs as opposed to what they want.
In my attempt to stuff as many budget facts into this post I did alot of searches about exactly what our governemtn spends on different programs (so I could tear it apart) but I couldn’t find anything straightforward.
In the end I think the problem comes down to the issue of the ‘aisle’. Democrats want to spend in order to fix and Republicans want to cut in order to fix. They never agree so nothing useful gets done. As you may well know I am very much fiscally conservative so I am all for cutting back. The reason for my stance is simply this: cutting back is what the average American must to do make ends meet. What works for the average American will work for the American Government.