Scherer on the Federal Budget Wink News Never Asked

April 30th, Wink News reports what some of the filed congressional candidates want addressed related to the federal budget deficit.  Wink never contacted me related to the federal budget; or even mentioned I was a filed candidate.  Regardless of Wink's secret agenda, it was interesting to hear what eight of the novice candidates had to to say related to this overly broad and ambiguous question.

First, none of the candidates addressed the political reality including failing to address the root cause of why our federal officials are unable to adequately manage the federal budget.  Below is a good summation of the root cause of why this is so.

"No Labels believes the biggest problem with Congress is not necessarily the people in it.  It's the outdated rules, procedures and traditions that govern the institution and make it impossible for anything to get done.  Congress has become a place where even good, talented people get dragged down by a broken system.  But if the rules of Congress change, we can make our government work again."

So I agree this identifies the root cause of the failures of federal politicians to do anything most of expect of them related to the federal budget-antiquated rules, procedures and traditions.  Then, we have to note the polar extremes of the Obama Socialist Engineers as contrasted to the GOP fiscal conservatism for the rich as laid before us by Congressman Paul Ryan, Chair of the House Appropriation Committee's Path to Prosperty at the other polar extreme.

Neither are sustainable since they both fail to address the root cause of why we cannot get anything close to a balanced federal budget.

Second, I am not going to do a huge expansion in this post on the rules, procedures and traditions causing the huge federal budget deficit, yet. Instead, at this point a brief history is in order. How easy it is to forget the Bowles-Simpson Commission recommendations on how to deal with the federal budget Nov. 10, 2010 which suggested deep domestic and mililtary spending cuts, reforming the tax system by eliminating many tax breaks in return for lower overall tax rates, and reducing benefits for Social Security and Medicare? Why did we assemble a commission to only then reject their bipartisian suggestions?

Third, we have to review the failures of both the House and the Senate's inability to come anywhere close to a balanced budget by  compromise and bipartisian agreement. Looking forward into the Obama 2013 fiscal budget, huge problems remain in either reducing the federal budget deficit, targeting it to 20% or less of GDP, or addressing the root cause of the problem. 

Fourth, now we can address the polar extremism of the current candidates for Florida's 19th District. On one end, GOP Goss aligns with the polar extreme of Congressman Ryan and Dem Roach aligns on the other end with the socialist engineering of the Obama Administration's wanting to tax the rich and the middle class increasing federal receipts.

Neither of these extreme positions resolve the fundamental root cause.  The remaining candidates suggestions align in a similar pattern naively suggesting an unrealistic and non-specific need that we must rein in entitlements and somehow pass a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. So for the most part, we hear more of the flowery political rhetoric that does not address the root cause by any of them.

So before the election from these congressional candidates, these yahoos are trying to appeal to what voters want to hear before the election; so after the election the voters can get even more frustrated because none of these candidates can deliver what they want, post-election.

To all of this, I simply state we the people must address the root cause before we can solve this federal budget deficit.