I have to laugh when I think of the theatrical attempts to “balance the Federal budget”. I say theatrical because I believe that for the most part their public attempts at budgeting are largely for our benefit. In other words, I don't think they are really trying to balance anything except public opinion. This makes me think of another facet of life, and that is: pain.
No one likes pain. It hurts, right? Get rid of it, right? As a mother of twelve, I have experienced first-hand what I would call excruciating pain on many levels. Every part of my body (I think) in varying degrees and for varying amounts of time has been subject to pain which at times has seemed impossible to bear. At first, when I was younger, the answer for pain was a pain-killer. Your head hurts: take an aspirin. As I grew older and the pain became more complex, there were also more complex solutions. For instance, for a sore throat, the doctor would prescribe an antibiotic with the pain-killer. These simple solutions to pain were mostly acceptable until I had my first child. As I lay on the table being torn apart by the pain inside me, there was no amount of medication, short of complete anesthesia, that would stop the pain. I simply had to bear it. That episode of pain caused me to re-think my philosophy of pain.
I had been thinking that the solution for pain was to eliminate it through medication. As I began to experience many different kinds of pain, I realized that this solution was too simple and too often inadequate. So, I started looking for other ways to eliminate pain. First of all, I asked myself what was causing the pain. During my pregnancies, I often endured terrible back and leg pain which made it impossible to sleep or to walk. Pain medication during pregnancy can be dangerous for the baby, so I chose to simply endure the pain. That was easier said than done! Then I began looking for ways to eliminate the pain without killing it. I knew that pain killers, like their name, did a certain amount of killing; mostly of brain cells whose job it is to send pain messages to you. It would be like hiring a budget manager for your business who simply threw out all the bills you received in order to show on the books that you had plenty of money. I suppose it would work for a while, but when you found out what he was doing, you would probably have him arrested for fraud. Just so with the pain-killer. It doesn't really do anything to help the situation except to make you think that everything is OK, when in actuality, it isn't.
So, I took it upon myself to discover the source of my pain, which in the case I have been describing was a muscle in my back. I began reading about those areas of the body and was led from one piece of knowledge to another until I finally found a simple little exercise I could do every day for about fifteen seconds which would stretch the muscle in question and relieve all of the pain in both my back and legs. I laughed at myself for not finding it sooner and was able to complete all of my succeeding pregnancies with little or no back and leg pain.
Now a budget whose debt ceiling is constantly going higher is not a budget at all but a fiasco. No one is actually trying to 'balance' anything except their own position. The only way to balance a budget is to PAY the debt. Their answer is to PRINT more money in order to borrow more money in order to spend more money in order to pretend that we don't owe any money. It's like having a broken leg and instead of stopping to heal, you take pain pills and keep running. Eventually you will run out of brain cells to kill and you will collapse. At that point, you will be in much worse shape than if you just let the leg heal in the first place.
The “Balance the Budget” show is just that: a show. No one wants to stop, heal and pay debts. That takes time and sacrifice, patience and forbearance, knowledge and skill. Instead we will be treated to a carnival of “Kill the Messenger Who Dares to Speak of Budget Cuts.”, “A Fairy Tale Theater Where No One Ever Has To Pay Back Anything!” and the dizzying: “Look at the Amazing Men Who Can Avert Financial Disasters By Printing More Money!” Personally, I think I'll just stay home and balance my budget.
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