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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Almost there but still a disappointment

The time is fast approaching us as November 2nd is less then a month away. The senate race here in Indiana is a perfect example of the problem we have in modern politics. It is the never ending high school atmosphere where everything that happens is the fault of some else. If you look at the interview of Dan Coats with the Indianapolis Star you will read how everything happening now is the result of the Democratic leadership yet if you were to talk to Brad Ellsworth it is the fault of the republicans for not siding with the democrats. The us against them mentality that exists in government has got to go. The three most important things that are not talked about in this election are the budget, where the taxes are going and term limits / redistricting. The first two items go hand and hand and need someone to follow the money from the creation of the budget to the dispersal of the money. It would seem there is also a tendency to borrow from where there is a surplus to fill the lack of funds in another area. The problem is that the shortage is never addressed we borrow from any surplus to correct a budget problem and not a cash flow issue. It begins with going back over the budget and trimming the short areas and not the areas which remain with-in their allotted funds. We penalize those areas and departments which stay with-in budget by taking from their funds and give them to areas that cannot seem to get enough money. One way to combat this is to have a line by line vote and veto on all bills that go through legislation. this will help prevent the high dollar items from being tagged onto the end of bills so that it is ends up on major legislation that is a must pass that we get a large earmark added to the bill. Then to pass legislation that prevents money from being spent from area like pensions, social security unemployment to fill short falls in other areas of the budget. This actually would allow us to see what areas are either underfunded or overspending and adjust either the budget or to go through how the money is being spent and stop the leaks in the overspending.The last item is in two parts and would address a lot of the attitudes and problems with-in the state level and federal houses and senates. The first would be term limits, these would keep career politicians from forgeting who they are there to serve. Since many state have a cap on the governor for a linit of 8 years it would seem that that might also be a good cap for the house as well. It would mean that the representatives could serve for 4 terms and it would also give the public who have a good representative a good candidate for state senate. If each senator was limited to 12 years or two terms a person still could serve 20 years but they would have to ern each level not just walk into a job for life. This would also better serve a district that is made up of one solid county not bits and parts of three differnet counties with three different sets of issues. We have some counties that are part of three differnet house districts in the state but the districts themselves are made up of counties that are seperated by political party and not geography. This is the mentality we must get past, high school is over and it is time to be adults and do the job you were voted in to do.

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