The View From the Middle

The View From the Middle

Did you know that, according to Politico, almost 40% of Americans (38% to be exact) consider themselves to be independents when it comes to their party affiliation?  In fact, since only 31% think they are Democrats and 29% align with the Republican Party, Independents are the largest political party in America today.  These numbers differ from, and are more significant than, voter registration figures since so many states require voters to declare Democratic or Republican affiliation to be able to vote in the primaries.  This is why both parties are desperately searching for candidates who can appeal to these true non-partisan people who represent the middle of America.  But wait, there are even more people who are “in the middle”, politically speaking.  When you toss in the conservative, blue dog Democrats and the liberal Republicans, they will undoubtedly add another 40% of the populous to the center of America.  Yet, despite the fact that roughly 80% of the country is NOT an extreme version of either political party; it seems that it is the extreme elements of both parties that occupy Washington D.C. and are constantly trying to tell us how to best run the country and resolve all of our fiscal and social issues.  The big question for me is, “should we be listening to them, or should THEY be listening to US?”

The reality is that there are positive aspects of both the liberal and conservative positions on almost any issue as well as negatives.  I encourage you to read the most recent platform documents for both the Democratic and the Republican parties.  Combined, they are about 120 pages long and the clearest point they make is that they don’t particularly like each other, and pretty much blame each other for all of our woes.  Just a side note here – in 1964 the Democratic platform was 11 pages long and in 1864 the Republican platform was one page long.  Of course Lincoln was managing through a civil war and was well known for his brevity, but the question remains; is this progress or just complexity that actually hinders understanding?  Am I the only one who longs for the simplicity of the good old days?

Ok, back to the content of the platforms.  The good news is that they do not disagree on “what” the problems are.  They just disagreed on “how” to solve them.  Neither party, for example, wants stupid kids and no one ran on a platform of fiscal irresponsibility.  They each, of course, promise to deliver smart kids and balanced budgets by implementing their particular policies, or their “hows”.  You would think that if they really are going to fix the same problems, then their plans would be very similar, but they aren’t.  That is because of the basic difference between the two parties, which you will find in their platform preambles.  To summarize, the Democratic Party believes in a bigger government with more control and regulation to guide the American people.  The Republican Party believes in private sector solutions and individual responsibility and a government that performs some very limited functions like defense, infrastructure and law enforcement, etc. Actually, there is merit in both of these visions for government.

Even President Obama suggests that we should have a “healthy skepticism” about the role of government in our lives.  And, lest 1984 should become more than just a date and a novel, we must be vigilant about giving up too much of our freedom even if the government promises to provide for all of our needs.  On the other hand, we have proven over and over that man has the capability to be selfish, greedy and even cruel in our quest for self-promotion.  Just look back to Enron, Goldman Sachs and the recent housing collapse.  We need SOME regulation to protect us from ourselves. So, the best solutions will, and should, come from a blend of these two visions - a view from the middle.

The extreme elements in Washington (liberal and conservative) can’t or won’t accept the positive aspects of the other party’s stance and constantly defend the obvious shortcomings of their own positions.  They must believe it is more important to protect their political ideology than it is to find truth or compromise.  The beautiful thing about “We the People” in the middle of the American belief system is that we don’t have to confine ourselves to only one of the political parties’ approaches to any issue.  We can choose to accept positive elements from both sides of any position and develop a hybrid idea that can actually work.

So, if you are interested in truth, compromise and progress, take off the partisan blinders and really listen with your heart and mind.  Real wisdom can be found in the middle, and the view from the middle is what can provide real solutions instead of the gridlock we so often find in Washington.

Uniting America

Unite or Divide America

A View From the Middle

When America is united, there is almost nothing we can’t accomplish.  In 1776 a unanimous Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence and established this country, pulling us away from the control of the most powerful empire on earth at the time.  In World War II a United USA joined the Allied forces in Europe and changed the outcome of the war and the history of this planet, as we know it today.  After 9/11/2001, this country came together as I have never witnessed before or since and rebuilt the city of New York and kept this country safe for the next ten years.  So, if we are so strong when we work together and our leaders say that they are committed to unity, why are we such a divided country today?  I believe it is a heart issue.  It is impossible to unite a country when your leaders are calling huge chunks of the populous SOB’s, the enemy, terrorists or even demons.

There are passionate people in our country who believe strongly in certain causes and issues.  For example, our politicians divide themselves into conservative and liberal camps.  I have read both the Republican and Democratic platforms and even the Tea Party’s mission statement and the good news is that they don’t disagree on “what” needs to be done for this country.  All sides are for fiscal discipline.   All sides are for creating opportunity for all of our people.  All sides want to create jobs and improve the lives of our current working class and for our children.  No one is for reckless spending, unemployment or racism, but that is exactly what some politicians will accuse the other side of when they disagree on “how” to fix our problems.

Maxine Waters, Congresswoman from California’s 35^th district, recently told the country that the Tea Party could, “go to hell.”  This is extremely divisive rhetoric and implies that the Tea Party has different goals for this country than she does.  She is suggesting that while she is for jobs and opportunity and security for her constituents, the Tea Party is for the opposite.   They are, of course, actually for the same things and simply differ on how they plan to deliver the results.  Andre Carson, Congressman from Indiana’s 7^th district, in my opinion is even worse.  He suggested that there were members of Congress that would like to see him “hanging from a tree” or, in other words, lynched.  This is not only absurd, but is extremely inflammatory and will incite one group of Americans to actually hate another.  I would ask both Maxine and Andre if they really believed that the best thing for this country right now is to get Americans to detest each other just so that they don’t have to compromise on “how” to address our issues.  The same needs to be said to the Tea Party.

Maxine Waters and Andre Carson also fail to understand that Tea Party members are Americans too.  Tea Partiers are Americans who love this country as much as Maxine and Andre do.  They have forgotten that there are also Tea Party supporters who are serving in our Armed forces right now and risking their lives everyday for them.  Do they really want to tell them to, “Go to hell.”  Does Andre Carson really think that our soldiers who are fighting for him every day really want to see him, “hanging from a tree”?   Does Jimmy Hoffa, the younger, really want to call conservative soldiers “SOB’s”?  I think not.

What all politicians need to realize is that there is wisdom in both the liberal and conservative approaches.  We have made promises we can’t keep and we are spending too much of American’s money and we need to stop.  We also must realize that caring for the downtrodden is what makes America what it is and we can’t turn our backs on the disadvantaged.  The real answers to our problems today are going to be found in forged compromises that contain aspects of both conservative and liberal positions and a “united” America.

The biggest challenge for the next President, no matter who it might be, will be to bring this country together again.  To paraphrase President Obama, there is no black America or white America or Conservative or Liberal America – There is just a United States of America.  And the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can put this country back on track.  Finally, to quote one of my favorite Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.”  The opposite is also true.

Debt and Taxes

In 2010 our government spent about 3.7 trillion dollars.  That’s about $120,000 per second – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  At that rate, the average taxpayer only funds our government for a fraction of a second each year.  That’s a lot of money, but as long as it matches up with what is coming in, then it’s not a problem, right?  The sad fact is that we are borrowing about 1.5 trillion dollars a year to fund all of our spending or about 40% of our total spending.  Now, that’s a problem.  And, unfortunately, trillion dollar deficits are the plan for the next 10 years when our total debt will be over $23 Trillion.  Just servicing that debt will become a huge problem, especially if interest rates go up. 

If common sense didn’t convince you that we have a deficit spending problem then, hopefully, the recent downgrade of the US financial outlook by Standard and Poor’s did.  Our current debt of $14.3 trillion represents about 90 percent of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and ranks us 8^th in the world in that measure.  By the way, this is a measure where you don’t want to be number one.  For perspective, Greece is ranked number 3 and Portugal is number 5.  So, do we have a spending problem or a revenue problem?  I would say the true answer is – yes!  So, what does a balanced plan look like to address this issue?

First, we all need to understand that revenues are at the lowest level as a percent of GDP in the last 50 years.  We currently pull in 15 percent of GDP in federal income taxes while we normally collect 17 to 18 percent.  There are at least three things reducing revenue today.  First, unemployment both reduces income from potential taxpayers and sucks money from the treasury in the form of unemployment payments.  Next, our tax system is broken when manufacturing giants like General Electric (GE) can make 14 billion dollars in profit and pay no taxes in the US, and Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.  Finally, 50 percent of Americans pay no federal income taxes.  While most of these people can’t afford to pay huge dollars to the government, I believe that no one should have a completely free ride for living in this great country

So how should we increase revenues considering the above causes?  First, President Obama needs to put together a more business-friendly administration.  Especially now, we need to be removing barriers to business growth instead of piling thousands of pages of new regulations onto our job creators.  The US Chamber of Commerce pointed out that the new financial laws have spawned over 500 new rules and the healthcare reforms will create 159 new agencies, commissions and panels which would add thousands of dollars per worker in administrative costs to employers and drive jobs overseas.

Next, tax reform would stop subsidizing companies like GE and properly tax millionaires and billionaires like Warren Buffet and bring in billions of dollars without raising tax rates on the already overburdened middle class.  Finally, I would be in favor of a small but broad federal sales tax.  Each 1% sales tax would bring in almost $50 billion in revenue and would force everyone to contribute to the solution.

Now, what about spending cuts?  Virtually everyone agrees that there are 100’s of billions of dollars of excess, redundancy and waste in our government’s discretionary spending which accounts for about 15 percent of our total. The Department of education, for example started in 1979 with a budget of $14 billion and 450 people.  In 2012 it is projected to cost $77 billion and employ 5,000 people.  This would be fine if it was working, but in 1979, average SAT scores in the US were 1038 and in 2005 (when the two tiered scoring stopped) they were 1028.  Every program and agency needs to prove its benefit or be eliminated.

Finally, we need to pull our heads out of the sand on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  All of these programs are facing demographic realities that just won’t allow them to be solvent in the near future.  In 1950, for example, there were 16 people paying in to Social Security for every one person receiving benefits.  In 2005 that ratio was approaching 3 to 1 and by 2031 it will be practically 2 to 1.  Anyone who is saying we should not touch these two entitlement programs is just pandering for votes.