Just Wind The Clock- It's Going To Happen Again

Last Friday the leadership in Congress and the Executive branch finally came to a last-minute agreement to narrowly avert a government shutdown. As expected, everyone waited until the last minute before finally showing their hand.

A soldier in Afghanistan (supporting a family back home) wondered if he was going to be paid. Some of these heroes literally live paycheck-to-paycheck. So, while dodging Taliban snipers and trying to avoid IEDs planted in the road, he now had to worry if his wife and children would have the money they needed for support while he was gone.

It's inexcusable- unfortunately this is the world of politics, partisanship, and debt we live in today.

Congress will likely pass the $38 billion in "reductions" that were part of the final agreement to create the FY2011 budget (many months late). Just to add to the confusion surrounding what was actually accomplished, the CBO posted their analysis of the deal the day before the vote stating the number isn't really $38 billion but somewhere around $350 million for FY2011 due to the maze of IOUs, transfer accounts, and other accounting gimmicks included in our federal accounting process. To add more fuel, they posted their projections indicating our deficit for the first six months of the year will be about $800 billion- over $110 billion more than the same time last year. We aren't making much progress.

The politics are getting uglier- and Americans have no idea who to believe.

While the lights remain turned on for now, these last-minute agreements are unfortunately going to be the norm. The fiasco that occurred last week is a drop in the bucket compared to what we're going to experience when the votes to raise the debt ceiling and the 2012 budget debates really get underway. Quite honestly, the stability of our economy is at stake.

Republicans want to use the scorched-earth approach, Democrats want to protect self-interests. Most of us know the right answer is somewhere in between. It's now a game of chicken- and we're all on the receiving end.

We'd better brace ourselves. The coming months are not going to be pretty. Whether we want to accept reality or not- addressing health care and entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) will be or should be central to the discussion.

The world has changed and America has changed and now is the time we'll really see what we're made of. We had just better be sure we don't ask those who are already sacrificing so much while they are protecting our freedoms in hostile environments to sacrifice more just because we can't get our act together here at home.

We're better than that.