President Obama's speech on debt reduction was one of the best speeches he has crafted. It established the goals that characterized both the America we have known and the America we want others to believe we are. But the character and compassion that are the face of America don't characterize all Americans. Consequently, not everyone found the speech equally appealing.
Republicans say they seek to severely cut federal spending and rapidly reduce the national debt because that is what the American people send them to Washington to do. Even Republican who were not elected in 2008 say that, despite polls to the contrary.
People with religion faith should not compromise their principles in living their own lives. But in a nation of people with different religious faiths and different views about religion, the principles of the people's religious faiths sometimes must acknowledge and tolerate behaviors that are contrary to their own beliefs. Because of such diversity of beliefs, adultery, for example, is not illegal in America.
If America were a religious state, abortions very likely would be considered both morally and legally wrong.
But not every American has religious faith and even Americans with the same faith react differently to the faith's teachings. Many Americans tolerate abortions, not because they believe the practice is morally right, but because they choose to be tolerant to fellow Americans who believe abortions to be legally permissible under certain circumstances. .
Everybody has to sacrifice economically and compromise ideologically in order to reduce the nation's debt. But who should make bigger sacrifices: wealthy individuals who earned and have much more money than they need, or the middle class who, in many cases, barely earned and have enough to survive, and the working poor and unemployed who still neither earn nor have enough? Jesus addressed the question. And even atheists know the answer. Certainly those who service the rich will earn more when the wealthy pay less taxes. But those who service the middle class and working poor earn more when these American are taxed less. But which achieves more for most people? Despite Republican claims that they know the answer, they don't.
There is certainly no conclusive evidence that the Bush tax cuts created jobs and reduced national debt. Nor is there evidence that, by making tax cuts permanent, the effects of reduced government spending and increased spending and investing by the wealthy would enhance debt reduction more than would adding these taxes to the federal treasury.
Republicans seem to believe it is economically better and morally appropriate to impose economic pain on powerless people in the near future so wealthy Americans won't be inconvenienced by debt in the distant future. They claim they don't want to leave debt for their children and grandchildren. But at the same time they are trying to so enrich the parents and grandparents of these future generations that their inheritances will prevent any lingering debt from affecting their standards of living.
Most American families have gone through a period when they had a house note, a car note, credits cards, various kinds of insurance, savings and investments and other expenses. (You'll notice I didn't mention traveling.) But they paid them off in time, first, because they did not buy or spend on things they could not afford, and, second, because one or both parents had jobs that brought income into the home. Should a family's economic status get to the point where parents must choose between having an insufficient amount of food on the table for the children or having the mother get a job, or the father getting an extra job or a better paying one--or all three--the parents will choose bringing more money into the home. They won't choose to starve the children or stop payment on the car. In tough economic times, governments also can pay its bills if it eliminates wasteful spending and raise revenue through taxation, but it, too, should not choose to do so by starving the helpless or not treating the ill.
If families are better off by spending less and saving more, why would that not also be true of government?. In an emergency, federal needs may exceed savings, and like a family, must borrow money and pay it back within a time-frame it can afford.
Unfortunately, Americans who have been convinced that big government is bad for them often need big government. If small government were so good, why are so many states and cities having budget problems. And governments don't get much smaller than school districts. Why, then, are so many American schools failing to educate children well?
But government can be no more responsive to the needs of powerless people than is the character of the people who elect politicians to office. As the character of a nation deteriorates, the kinds of things politicians they elect do become more outrageous, power is usurped, competition is squashed, and democracy dies.
Reducing the national debt and balancing the federal budget obviously aren't easy tasks. But both seem more humane and effectively achieved when, during tough economic times, economic pain is reduced for those who need help and economic sacrifice is increased for those who can give it, gradually reversing the process as the economy improves, when the less able need less help and have more buying power, when increased tax cuts provide the more able with greater opportunities to invest and further enhance economic growth.
That will require a diverse America to have a shared vision, whicht seems to be where President Obama wants to lead the nation. Republicans either can't see that far, or they won't look.
Ronald
Email: rcspoon@earthlink.net
Blog: ronaldspooner.blogspot.com
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