Another Election Day: Another Round of False Promises

Republican candidates have won in New Jersey and Virginia signaling to the GOP that the tide has turned; Americans are done with President Obama and the Democrats and the Republicans will return home to roost. Since all politics is local, I doubt Obama is really much of a factor in these races but in those where Democrats lost this evening, the Republicans will cheer these victories as a resurgence.

From the looks of it, 2010 will be daunting for many of the newly elected, especially those who are untested. In the last decade, politicians have not had to really fix much, they merely needed to promise that they would reduce taxes and cut spending to be elected. But mostly popularity was the order of the day as both taxes and spending increased monumentally. With the aura of rising prosperity, we ignored that the mountaintop that we were joyfully standing upon was a solid mass of debt and so did our governments and municipalities.

Now that the economy has crashed, we want everything fixed right away but we don't want to cut any spending even though we want lower taxes. Sadly, the most beneficial spending cut is a reduction in personnel just like every major corporation has already done to balance the bottom line. However, few of these government workers/voters recognize that they comprise a major cost center of the budget and they have no plans to vote themselves out. Any one seeking office promises the spending cuts but they are difficult to attain. I wish them all luck.