You may have forgotten, but in 1985 the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act was passed (and signed by President Reagan.) It has been commonly known as Gramm-Rudman-Hollings.
At the time of the passage, the American people were told that, by passing the new law, we would have a balanced budget by a target date and regain our fiscal strength and stability.
Since that time, the Act has been amended and modified multiple times…and it was effectively supplanted in the year 1990 by the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990…and of course, since that time we have fallen deeper into financial problems and economic uncertainty. Although in the 1990′s we did have a government surplus, it has in general been a rocky ride since 1985. This rocky ride of economic uncertainty has occurred for one reason: politicians have been lousy stewards of our nation’s finances.
Why do I post this blog post? and refer to the hoodwinking of the American people? For the simple reason that no matter what is agreed to now and passed now to avoid the fiscal cliff, which will include provisions that supposedly will apply for a decade, it will just be amended and modified many, many, many times in the future to undermine all original goals.
New Presidents will be elected, as well as new members of the House and the Senate and they will all go back to the bad habits of Washington …..which is to spend beyond our means, and then wait until the last minute to do their jobs to try and put some order in our nation’s finances and then make wild promises as to how it will be fixed that are never kept. Our leaders have failed us.
What do you think?
