POLITICAL THEATER AND OTHER WAYS TO CON VOTERS

I am not a Tea Party member but I support the notion of smaller government, especially less government involvement in personal affairs. There likely are times when the government must temporarily step in and help individuals with various aide programs. Such programs should expire after some reasonable time, but a period not to exceed the life of the average elephant. We have government subsidies going to people and industries that have existed for decades. That is wrong. Is it any wonder that these people or industries come to depend on these subsidies?

Some of us used to complain about so many people on welfare who seemed to treat it as a way of life. Three generations of one family -- grandmothers, mothers and daughters -- received welfare payments with all likelihood that the fourth generation, the current welfare mother’s children, is headed in the same direction. That is no different from farm families, say, that receive billions of dollars each year for not working land, not planting crops or some other non-producing farm-subsidy program. And they expect to receive the same next year, and the next year, ad infinitum.

Newly elected Tea Party backed U.S. Reps. Vicky Hartzler, R – Missouri, received $750,000 (!) in farm subsidies last year. When Diane Sawyer of Good Morning America asked if she would vote to eliminate farm subsidy programs as a step toward lowering government debt – supposedly a Republican-Tea Party agenda item – she refused to say yes or no. "Yes, there's a lot of us farmers that have participated in the program(s)," she said, but indicated when Ms. Sawyer persisted in asking the question again only that such agriculture subsidies should be "on the table" for possible spending cuts.

Let us not be gullible, people. No mid-West, farm belt congressperson will vote even to cut much less remove farm subsidies. The same can be said about voting to cut military spending by a congressperson representing a district with a large military-industrial footprint.

Forget the angry campaign rhetoric about reducing government involvement or reducing the national debt. When such programs (and they all do to some extent) impact people back in your home district every politician of either party or political philosophy begins to waffle. It is fine to talk about making cuts in government spending, it is another matter to deliver on that talk, and the newly elected congress does not seem any more willing to walk the walk than the previous congress.

Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, students of the Rush Limbaugh Policy Group, have already indicated that their primary focus will be to see that Obama is a one-term president. They will say many things for the benefit of “the folks back home” (It’s called preaching to the choir) but they have yet to propose any specific debt reduction programs. Boehner’s most significant leadership act thus far is the not-ready-for-prime-time political theater of having the U.S. Constitution read aloud in the House of Representatives.

That is sure to put every new congressperson in the right frame of mind to generate and support good legislation. (It also demonstrates to those new to congress how to waste time with parliamentary maneuvering.) What they need now is someone like Walt Disney to conduct a seminar on how one actually gets things done.

The Tea Party, I fear, just wanted the Democrats out of office. You may remember their motto: JUST VOTE THEM OUT! Indeed, some deserved to be voted out of office. But, alas, too many voters never considered the legitimate question: Replace them with whom?

The first act of these newbies in congress is to force a vote on repealing the Obama health care plan. They know it is futile. They know it will not pass. It is all political theater, and I fear we are in for two more years of such political posturing while our debt and other problems continue to mount.