Tuesday, January 5, 2010

We Think America Can Handle 'The Truth'!

  
Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, played so convincingly by Jack Nicholson in the movie, “A Few Good Men” should run for Congress.  In 2010. Or President.  In 2012.

Why? Because apparently he would tell us the ‘truth’ as he saw it in this great confrontation scene with the effervescent Tom Cruise.

Not the usual self-protecting and self-perpetuating pap that we have always heard from almost every politician from both political parties over the last 3 decades who have promised that you will get ‘something for nothing’: “Vote for me and I will give you tax cuts, unlimited almost-free (i.e. ‘taxpayer-subsidized’) health care, cash for your clunker, an $8000 downpayment for your house and a chicken in every pot!”

When did every single American start believing in Santa Claus and then elected him to represent them in the U.S. House or Senate in Washington, DC?  We are all adults who have registered to vote in the most free country the world has ever known; just tell us what is going on and we will respond if we believe everyone is in it for the good of the nation.  We can take it.

If President 'Jessep' went on national television live from the Oval Office and told us the things we list below, we believe that you, the American public, would understand 'the truth', appreciate 'the truth' and, most importantly, respond to 'the truth' by electing fellow citizens to Congress who will make the tough decisions we have to take as a nation for the benefit of us all in the future.

Here is the ‘truth’ of the matter, as we believe President Jessep would see it based on our experiences on Capitol Hill and on the House Budget Committee, among other perches over time:

  1. We have got to get health care cost inflation down close to the normal rate of inflation in the overall economy, not triple the rate as has been the norm in the past 3 decades. If that means not passing the current health care bill or repealing entire sections of it before it is fully operational in 2014, then so be it. It just plain doesn’t pass the ‘laugh’ or ‘smell’ test that it will drive costs downward as promised by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid.
     
  2. We have got to reform and reduce the rate of growth in all entitlement spending, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  (notice we don’t even say ‘cut’; just reducing the rate of growth in the baseline projections will do the trick.  We are now transferring between $12,000-$15,000 per year per senior citizen from general tax revenues to support Medicare Part B; there are now 40 million enrollees and in 2020, there will be close to 65 million enrollees...you do the math)
  3.  
  4. Enact fundamental structural changes in all entitlement programs by addressing the structural cost-drivers and raise the eligibility age for Social Security by two months each year, match Medicare’s eligibility age with Social Security and adjust eligibility in both programs according to income. (exceptions for health and disability reasons)
  5.  
  6. We believe that a far better way to stimulate our national economy is to abolish the corporate income tax code right now, forever.   Rather than spend trillions of dollars on another infrastructure 'stimulus' bill (the first doesn't seem to have worked very well, does it?), abolishing the corporate income tax would send a massive jolt through the economic system of America that would wake this economy up like one of those defibrillators you see everywhere nowadays it seems.
     
  7. No more bailouts of any industry or companies.  It goes completely against any notion of free enterprise and capitalism.  None of these companies willingly offer to share their profits with the federal government when things are great. (they are ‘forced’ to share profits through taxes) Why should the taxpayer of this country be asked to pay for their losses when things go bad, almost always as a result of a poor investment decision or expectation?
     
  8. We think every and all actions should be taken to prevent the national debt from increasing any higher than the current $12 trillion debt ceiling limit.  Even if it takes passing annual ‘continuing resolution’ bills in Congress to hold spending at last year’s levels and not passing any new authorization or appropriations bills for the next 7 years.  Congress will be then forced to nibble at the edges and take large bites out of federal spending which will inevitably be some parts of the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ we have all been looking for for decades.
     
  9. If you don't want to do any spending reductions at all along these reasonable lines, then we are going to have to raise income taxes on every single person by thousands of dollars per year because passing this debt along to our kids and grandkids is immoral, unethical and wrong.  Debt is for political cowards, not political leaders.
  10.  
Come to think of it, maybe Jack Nicholson can be convinced to run for President in the persona of Colonel Nathan Jessep.  (Imagine what the White House dinner parties would look like then)

We have a history of electing movie stars to the highest elective office in the land, you know.

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