The Scissors and the Axe

Scissors and axes, despite being very different, are used for the same purpose, albeit in much different manners. Scissors are used for light cutting or trimming, axes are for hewing, just chopping it up.

If you had to take either scissors or an axe to the federal budget, which would you choose? Perhaps given all the rhetoric you've heard, or maybe if you're a Tea Partier, you'd take the axe, hacking away at our nation's infrastructure and programs without any regard or realization for the damage being done to vital programs or our nation's future. But the axe is the wrong choice. You'd be much better off choosing the scissors, because chopping away at America's budget wantonly means cutting in a lot of the wrong places. We want to cut off excess branches, not fell the tree.

So what we need is careful analysis. Identifying the areas of growth is more important to our nation's future than indiscriminately hacking at the excesses. In his piece today, David Brooks, one the New York Time's conservative columnists, calls for such an analysis. As Brooks points out, we're cutting the future. Republicans like to talk about future generations and how we're saddling them with a huge fiscal burden. Fair enough, but is the best way to ensure that they won't have to pay by cutting education so we can be positive that future Americans won't be educated enough to get good jobs? In some twisted way that works...Ladies, and gentlemen, I give you the Republican vision of the future: America, land of the dumb, unemployed, and debt free.

I'm sorry, sometimes the alley is there and I just have to oop it, but in all seriousness, cutting just to cut, just to live up to a campaign promise may be good politicking, but it's terrible politics. Serious cuts DO have to be made, and I'm quite sure that Republicans - Tea Partiers among them - have identified quite a few wasteful areas, of which there are many. That having been said, there is a lot of harm to be done when we don't think before we cut, when we take that axe and start swinging it.

Despite a huge deficit, America TODAY is in good shape. Not great shape, but good shape. In order to get America back into great shape TOMORROW, we're going to have to make tough, smart decisions. Celebrating cutting $60 billion from the budget is meaningless when you realize that a lot of those cuts are hurting Americans. It's easy to talk about saving America by cutting the budget until you realize that those cuts aren't saving America the country, they're hurting Americans the people.

Cut wisely. Make tough decisions, but don't sacrifice America's tomorrow (education) for a political victory today. SPEND when it's necessary. Say what you will about government spending and government waste, but we are the world's greatest nation and we got there by supporting each other and by investing in our future. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So take the scissors and trim the excesses, but cutting programs that help Americans means hurting America. Too many of our new politicians don't seem to grasp that.