Budget Delimma

I am beginning to wonder about the leaders this country sends to Washington D.C. For the longest time, I have thought that the process is busted, broke, bankrupt, but the last few days proved to me that a demon lives in D.C.

Wait a second, a demon? Well, not the kind of demon Hollywood gives us in one of those phony horror flicks, but the kind of demon that causes chaos and leads people away from the path of the carpenter.

The process is busted because a person can have the highest ideals, the greatest morals, be on the side of the angels when he or she is elected to office, but as soon as he or she gets to the hallowed halls of congress, the system corrupts them. For far too long, money, power, and multinational corporations have swayed decisions in the direction of the holders of the money, the keepers of power, and the corporations themselves that the normal, everyday person is left out in the cold.

It is happening again today. If a compromise on the federal budget is not met by 12 am this day, a government shut down will occur. The problem is not really about money either. It is about political ideology. Republicans want to cut money from social programs the extreme political right disagrees with so they can get re-elected! It is more important to get re-elected? I'd think it is more important to keep the government running! Here is the kicker--if we returned to the tax rates of 1961, the government would increase its revenue by $716 billion dollars per year! But that would mean those making over a million dollars a year and the biggest corporations in the country would have to pay their fair share because they haven't. In fact, some of the biggest corporations pay less tax than I do!! That would mean less money in their pockets. Makes one wonder what they worship? God or mammon?

Granted there is waste in Washington. Granted we could trim the fat on a lot of programs. Granted there are people who abuse the system, but does that mean that we have to close the entire program down? No, it means we need to fix it so that it works smoother.

A great question adapted from an old book--What Would Jesus Cut?