Government Needs Simple Fixing..here's one idea...what ya think?

Question

In our medium sized town our local city fathers recently decided to re-pave the main street in front of their brand new government center building (it cost tax payers 45 million) the re-paving of the road cost 12 million, it was just re-paved 2 years ago and was prefectly fine. Many of us residence wondered out loud and some wrote letters to the editor asking why should we pay again to re-pave the road...after much hand ringing they finally said: If we didn't use those funds we would lose those dollars next year...WHAT an OUTRAGE! So they waste 12 million of OUR money...so their budgets wouldn't be cut by the state and federal governments. Folks... this is why America is in DEBT trillions of dollars. Now mulitply this by 100's of town and cities across this country. It would not take a brilliant person to FIX this wasteful spending by these bureacrats...

okay....that's my rant....Tell me where I'm wrong!

Answer 1

Pork barrel politics have been around for a long time, though slightly different from the waste you describe.

Politicians, regardless of party affiliation, try to maintain the support of their constituency by, in effect, allowing them to vote themselves largess from the public treasuries.

This is the same reason why business as usual is allowed to go unchecked in Washington, election cycle after election cycle. Even if there were new blood elected to fill the seats of Congress and the Senate, they would have to become one of the "good ol' boys" just to get proposed legislation to committee.

Then, even when there is a good piece of legislation proposed by a member of any party, the pork barrel add-ons, usually with nothing what ever to do with the original proposal, are necessary to get the bill from committee to House to Senate to President's desk.

This is how a bill that would (hypothetically) provide milk to underprivileged school students winds up with a proviso for XX millions of dollars for research into development of an electric dog polisher, the beneficiary of which is a constituent of THE
Senator who's vote is absolutely necessary to get the bill passed.

When the party strategists sequester themselves in their respective think tanks, does anyone actually believe they are discussing the means by which they can better our country as party planks? The imperative is always getting their candidate elected., period.

Case in point. For quite some time the concept of "work-fare" has been bantied about, with the idea of programs like the TVA, that helped America drag itself out of the Great Depression, being part and parcel of a proposed solution to the welfare drain on our fiscal resources. So, where is it?

So, I would have to say there is no simple fix to the rampant problem, except perhaps to get the 60% of registered voters who don't vote to use a little common sense in conjunction with moderation, drag themselves away from their TVs and computers, get off their collective butt and reclaim our right to representation.

Answer 2

you're right, except, the reason we're $100,000,000,000 is because George W. Bush is retarding it up.

Answer 3

Thinking we can change it.......through political action.

Answer 4

i think oyur absulutly right