Fiscal Cliff

I read opinions concerning the "Fiscal Cliff".  I am one that is far from understanding if it is a good or bad thing for the United States.  I do know that the way it is and has been going for the past 4 years that either way it is not good for the United States. 

I know that President Obama's main focus is raising taxes on the wealthy.  Does this destroy the American dream that you can be who and want you want to be?  If you are successful you will be taxed higher than your neighbor.  Stop and think about this, your neighbor is using the same tax codes as the wealthy to reduce their own tax liability.  Why know does the government want to penalize those that have been successful only?

In all the publicity concerning the negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff I have heard nothing about the government wanting to clean their own back yard as it relates to wasteful spending, fraudulent spending and abuse of their own powers to be.  Has President Obama said that he wants to eliminate even a small portion of the fraud, waste and abuse that could very well fall into the hundreds of Billions of dollars?  If he thinks that tax only the wealthy would create $800 billion dollars over a period of time, I contend that he could save and accumulate more than that if he just tackles fraud, waste and abuse.  Read Senator Tom Coburn's book on wasteful spending and you want me to believe that President Obama doesn't have access to that same book.  Why doesn't this bother him more than raising taxes on the wealthy?

Ask yourself why the federal government is not being held accountable for what goes on in Washington.  Just this week there is an article in the Federal Times that outlines the VA's stonewalling and refusal to answer questions and provide documents and other pertinent information on just the wasteful spending in VA for conferences and parties.  At this time a Congressman from Florida has uncovered so far $86.5 million dollars spent on conferences for 2011 alone.  The Congress is asking VA why hundreds of questions about conference spending have not been answered in the last 6 months.   The VA was shown posted pictures of VA Canteen Service employees on a trip to Italy.  The VA shot back that they were not prepared to answer those questions as the Congressman had not given them warning that he was going to ask questions on the overseas trips.  Come on people, why in the hell should Congress give a list of questions to anybody that is going to testify in front of them, so they can come up with some bogus answer that they hope will satisfy them?  And then the Deputy Secretary for VA Scott Gould said he apologizes to "Veterans and the Congressional Committee and that it is unacceptable this money was wasted".  Duh!    

And then a Democrat from Florida said she was not happy that the Republican did not show her the photos on Face book prior to the hearing.  She said this could bode for a difficult relationship between Republicans and Democrat es on what is considered a bipartisan panel.  Please understand that this Democrat had the same access to the Face book that the Republican had.  It just appears that with a Democratic Administration that anything that a Republican does is going to be screwed around in a negative manner.  Do the Republicans have a chance from the beginning.  Please also understand that it was not a Democrat that first raised the issue with VA's wasteful spending.  The Democrats would more than likely shoved it under the table and let it go to protect the administration. 

I continue to hear things like we are not supposed to be political and to not get involved with the political process in Washington.  How many Service Organizations have heard this one?  Is it because they are Chartered by the Congress?  But everything that affects Veterans and the rest of the people of the United States is political and comes directly from Washington D.C.  So why are the American people and Veterans not supposed to be political?  People just need to wake up and take a reality pill.

And then you are all aware that President Obama wants to change the Constitution so that it gives the President the sole power to raise the "the National Debt Limit" and he can then borrow money whenever he sees fit and wants to.  This gives him the power to continue to spend this country into oblivion.  People he has no intentions of cutting spending.  If he did want to cut spending then why in hell would he need the power to raise the national debt ceiling and borrow more money?  You can think and believe what ever you want, but President Obama and the Democratic Administration has already put the United States almost $7 Trillion dollars further in debt in the last 4 years.  You can continue to blame President Bush all you want, but in 8 years of war, President Bush and the Republicans only increased the debt (in 8 years) by $4 Trillion dollars. 

What is the United States of American going to look like in the next 20 years if the President is given more and more power and continues on the path that we are headed?  So again would the fiscal cliff be so bad, or would it require Washington D.C. to pull up their big boy pants and get to work on cleaning up Washington for starters?  I kind of figure if you clean up Washington, you have half of the problem tackled.  

Homer "Cris" Ford

Veterans Advocate