Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Caution:Children Playing

I have said it before and I will say it again, if state and federal legislators had jobs in the real world, they would get fired for their childish antics. It never seizes to amaze me how incompetent and foolish these grown men and women act. Since Obama has been office, the media and liberals have accused Republicans of being obstructionists - claiming they used the filibuster too often. This did not stop Obama from passing more legislation since Lyndon Johnson. Obama passed the nearly 1 trillion dollar Recovery Act that failed to create jobs; Obama passed credit card reform that has not stopped skyrocketing interest rates; Obama passed financial reform that will fail to stop another financial meltdown because it conveniently fails to reform public entities; and Obama passed healthcare reform legislation that is now issuing state wide waivers exempting companies and organizations from complying with the law. If this is obstruction, then the Republicans are not very good at it. Sure, the Republicans tried to stop this porous legislation from being passed, but the real obstructionists were a group of 54 Blue Dog Democrats. Despite having nearly 60% majorities in both houses of Congress – liberal Democrats had to carve out and make special deals with dozens of Blue Dog Democrats to narrowly pass these awful examples of legislation in both houses of Congress.

In fact, the real obstructionists on these Obama policies were the Democrats. Democrats implemented a new children’s game in the name of obstructionism – Hide and Go Seek. Democrats locked themselves in chambers and worked on legislation without any GOP input. Democrats claimed Republicans offered no ideas and are the party of “no”. Of course, how would Democrats know if the GOP had any ideas since they isolated themselves from their adversaries? This was done merely to avoid a debate over proposed GOP ideas.

Just when we thought obstructionism and silly child’s play could not get any worse, it has. State legislative Democrats are also playing hide and go seek. They are leaving their states and not showing up to work to debate and vote on budget cuts. Democrats are crying foul and calling the Republicans proposed policies as “union busting”. Well, the Democrats have a point because the proposed legislation will limit union collective bargaining powers and even limit how much unions can collect in dues. This undoubtedly reduces the power of the Democratic Party. But unions and Democrats have themselves to blame. Unions and legislative Democrats have used collective bargaining leverage for decades to cut public workers sweetheart deals. Now, the leading cause of state and federal government deficits and unfunded liabilities are entitlements and massive pension plans. Hence, unions are an easy target – and I bet Republicans are salivating at the notion of sticking it to the Democrats. But this is no different than how Democrats had stuck it to the GOP the past 4 years. I have always said - what comes around goes around. If you want to be treated fairly in the minority, you better treat others fairly when you are in the majority.

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