The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Wouldn’t most of us like it if when doing the household budget we got more things every week and paid less? Ahhh, Nirvana. And if the wife started making a fuss about the inevitable consequences, someone would step up and call her a radical and tell her to be quiet? And then she’d get all bristly and tell you to shut up and you’d both point fingers at each other but keep getting stuff and then both sides would say the other is awful and blah, blah, blah. That’s sort of the deal out there in Washington and even Denver.
Partisan politics promising gold at the end of the road with no need to pay anything while the road crumbles benefits no one in the long run. Haggard political bosses like Harry Reid and John Boehner, who look like they came out of a Hollywood villain petri dish, have become the face of this country’s leaders. Yuck.
So when both United States Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and local state representative Kathleen Curry of Gunnison use the word “dysfunctional” to describe the party system in Colorado and the country…we just might have a problem.
Curry described the party system in the state as dysfunctional last December when she announced her switch from the Democratic Party to the ranks of the unaffiliated.
“I don’t fit in with always having to be mindful of the party agenda on either side. I see that system as dysfunctional,” she told me just before New Year’s Eve.
In an interview this past Tuesday, Bayh declared the American political system as “dysfunctional” riddled with “brain-dead partisanship” and permanent campaigning. He said it used to be that a Senator would campaign for two years and govern for four years. Now, the politicians campaign for six. He blamed intense partisanship on the need to constantly campaign and he said it wasn’t good for the health of the country.
Two moderate politicians ringing the alarm bell and calling the system we live under “dysfunctional.” This can’t be good.
According to a story on MSNBC, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a “shock” to Congress by voting incumbents out en masse and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups.
That sure sounds reasonable at this juncture and seems to capture the mood of the country. Most get the feeling that big tobacco, huge defense contractors, giant drug companies and others of that ilk control blocks of lawmakers through money and influence. Are campaign contributions bribes or contributions? Or both?
Is there enough money and power for those elected to continue running the country into a black hole of debt?
“There isn’t a single sitting member of Congress — not one — that doesn’t know exactly where we’re headed,” former Republican Senator from Wyoming Alan Simpson told the New York Times on Tuesday. “And to use the politics of fear and division and hate on each other — we are at a point right now where it doesn’t make a damn whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican if you’ve forgotten you’re an American.”
Simpson was tapped by President Obama to co-chair an 18 member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Republicans are resisting such a commission. Really guys?
While Bayh’s shock tactic might work if Americans could vote for the Congressmen and Senators outside of their own district, we all like to protect our own guy. The circle will continue until each of us understands each of us must take part of the hit. No one seems willing right now to give up their piece of the pork…so lower my taxes and give me my new highway funds or free healthcare, or let me bring the Explorer to an even better Cash for Clunkers program or buy another billion dollar jet to protect me from the Soviets who aren’t that much of a threat right now but the defense contractor needs the money to pay for more campaign contributions and blah, blah, blah.
When will the politicos realize that equation won’t work forever? We are cooking up a recipe for government implosion and just a few lawmakers want to really talk about it. Eventually, we will all pay a steep price.
Both Bayh and Curry are on to something and unfortunately it is more than a whiff of “dysfunction.” Look, no one wants to pay more (in taxes and fees) but everyone wants their roads smooth, the skies safe, their Medicaid enhanced, their Social Security increased and their shores protected. That ain’t real reality.
