April 20, 2023
Speaker McCarthy’s quasi-budget proposal reminds me: people do things for 2 reasons: “Me” and “We.” And “Me” weighs a lot more, and gets heavier and heavier if the “me” problems are existential, like eating, having a roof, an ability to care for your people.
We only get to “We” if “Me” is good.
The budget proposal by McCarthy targets government spending. Good. That’s a “We”, though a fairly abstract one. But he doesn’t tell me what I get. There’s no “Me.”
No tax cuts for all Americans. No vision for infrastructure improvements that would bring organic equity, like coast-to-coast wifi, data and voice, fast trains, more evenly distributed economic hubs. No plan for affordable home-ownership.
Why should I care about the size of the nation’s debt, one really big number I could not express as opposed to a different slightly smaller number I still could not turn into digits?
How about “we’re going to cut 20% across the board, with no sacred cows, and give 10% back to the people, either as services or tax abatements or vouchers? Without sunsetting Medicare, Social Security and Welfare, but managing them, as well as military spend?
And more privatization of government services. Private companies have to earn money. Governments services don’t. Privatize everything possible with tight, governed budgets.”
These are are rational conservative tactics. The federal government does a terrible job managing services, as does every government agency, because they do not have to be profitable. If you remove the necessity of profitability, you remove the necessity of cost management, and unmanaged costs become messy blobs.
Give me something in your budget. Put a “Me” in the equation. Pay less tax. Free wifi. School vouchers. Free health care. I need to feel the savings, by more than inflation relief. I need to feel it whether I am a Dem or Republican.
Then specify on the ‘“Wes.” Affordable housing. Poverty. Infrastructure. Crime. Drug Abuse. Health Care. They all have relationships with one another, non-exclusive, they cheat on and with each other, and beyond. But a good plan for each ultimately reduces cost through prevention, and weaning dependence on subsidized social services.
And a good plan for each make millions of lives better.
Speaker, show us more. In doing so, remember, nobody cares about the national debt, or government spend: we care about things that directly impact the Me, first, then we care about We problems that touch our day-to-day lives.
Neither We, nor Me, see any of that, yet, in your plan.
After that, J, he might as well become a Democrat.
Covid relief cost a bundle. Interest on the debt is becoming much more expensive with interest rates rising. I think we need more taxes to compensate and debt is a problem we need to address.