Time to Grow Up

I shake my head and wonder at people who mean well but don’t understand the balance of power.

This time I’m talking about the role of our Federal Government balanced with State and Local Governments.

Have you taken a look at the amount of money that our Federal Government owes recently?  It will blow your mind.  The debt has been increasing at an alarming rate for years and up until now, there was no end in sight.

This week the next proposed Federal Budget was released and there are a whole lot of people claiming it will ruin our country.  The cuts to the E.P.A. and the arts and education and, well nearly everything has been proclaimed to be disastrous.

The problem is that no one wants to see cuts to the programs that they benefit from, or that their family benefits from, or “someone” benefits from.

The usual argument is that these cuts will hurt the poor and benefit the rich.  Maybe.  Maybe not.

The argument should focus on the balance of power, like I stated earlier.

Our Federal Government has overstepped it’s boundaries and is imposing national programs on us that should be taken care of at a more local level.

We are the United States of America.  There is a distinction between each state that is being lost as the feds have control over more and more.  That’s not the way our Government was designed to operate.

In the current Federal Budget proposal, the slashes in spending also correspond with cuts in power that the Feds have in our lives.  They are handing the power back to the states where decisions can be made more effectively by people closer to the situations.  Instead of the Federal Government dictating all the rules, they want our State Governments to decide how to spend our tax dollars.

Granted, some programs that get Federal Dollars will be hurt if those Federal Dollars are taken away.  But that just means those programs need to revamp and find funds from other sources.

I have served in multiple capacities as a volunteer on committees, Boards of Directors, etc for several not-for-profit organizations over the years that did not live or die due to Federal funding.  We sometimes received grants from organizations besides the government.  It can be done without a Federal hand-out.  It might be a State hand-out, or it might be a private source of funds that allow these organizations and programs to continue.

You can do more than flood social media with your cries of outrage.  You can do better than Washington politicians and bureaucrats when it comes to spending money.  You can demand changes with your votes and town meetings and if they are aimed at the people who actually live in your city and state, you have a better chance of being heard.

It’s time to grow up.  We need to stop piling on Federal Debt for ourselves and our kids to pay and clean up our act.  Hold the Federal Government accountable for doing what they are supposed to do and demand they get out of the areas of our lives that they are not supposed to be involved with.  Demand your state and local government leaders step up and take back the powers they have instead of waiting around for the Feds to do the work.

It’s going to get messy but we have been creating this mess for over 200 years.  We have a framework to untangle this, if we use it.