where is that fiddle

Or maybe we should just be singing along with Talking Heads "Burning down the House".

because whatever they passed out of the bowels of Congress was not any real help towards our fiscal situation. This is truly Show and Tell by our government. Yep the democrats got a couple of wow we did it moments, but overall the deal is nothing more than hyperbole.

And the so called conservatives and their best friends the tea party didn't get anything they wanted due to their obstinate ways. I had suggested back in November that if we really wanted to get things done the Republicans needed to take charge and start offering a compromise then. They didn't get any spending cuts now and delays on getting any started.

So no real progress on cutting down our debt and deficit. Yeah 600 billion over the next ten years is going to put a dent in nothing. We do need to raise revenue, and we do need to cut spending. There are many ways to do both, but neither was truly accomplished.

And of course nothing more will get done. Yes we will get more Show and tell moments, but real progress, real work, I just don't see it.

I am at a loss on how to get people to realize we are the ones that have to hold Congress accountable. Until we find enough people to get energized to address Congress nothing substantive will be done. Right now I blame the so called conservatives for failing to act early enough to show true leadership and actually start working on a compromise that would have produced something more substantive.

To continue my blog redundancy: we need to improve real jobs, real wages to raise revenue and lower a tad bit of spending on entitlement programs, we need to think about tax raises at all levels, but at small amounts until spending is under control. Spending needs to come down in stair step fashion. One thing that will motivate the populace to hold Congress accountable is to make taxes come down again once we truly start spending less. Yes I said raise taxes and I am not talking about large scale raises, but true small amounts across the board. Just hit people with this carrot: taxes coming down once we get spending levels on a downward track.

And you can lower spending without lowering services if you plan ahead, but this is where I fear you won't get what we want. Relying on Congress to think is asking to win the lottery. We always talk about government waste. Hopefully we can trim the easy fat off first just to get the momentum started. I could go into great detail on budget cutting, but for the first couple of years we could very carefully find true fat to cut. And it is out there without touching any benefits or programs or even things like road repair, much less the military's ability to function well.

And some final comments from the redundancy file: tax incentives for job creation and product creation that helps us export, diversified energy programs, improve education being the one area where we might continue to increase spending or at least stay level ( we do need better criteria for judging how well our schools are doing). To really attack our deficit and debt we need to plan short and long term.

If we want our taxes to stay low, we have to accept reality and get our budget in line to afford lower taxes. Until then we have to compromise selectively to reduce debt and deficit, if we don't we fail ourselves, our children's children, our country.

To put it into a nutshell: reality sucks dude

As independent conservatives we need to champion a voice of reason because the Republicans and Tea party our shoving the country far left of center.