OVERHEARD ON C-SPAN ON NOVEMBER 10, 2009: CONGRESSIONAL BICKERING HAS GOTTEN THE WORLD'S ATTENTION

OVERHEARD ON C-SPAN ON NOVEMBER 10, 2009: CONGRESSIONAL BICKERING HAS GOTTEN THE WORLD’S ATTENTION

Senator Kent Conrad, D-ND, and Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee says that we need to appoint a bipartisan “special process” panel if we are to avert an imminent and catastrophic budgetary meltdown. Estimates are that we are currently collecting only 76% of the necessary revenue to maintain our current budget, and if remedial efforts are not begun quickly to reduce spending and raise needed taxes, we will ensure our further decline and inability to respond economically or otherwise as a nation.

There was a recent comment overheard in Chinese government circles to the effect that leadership in the United States is now too dysfunctional to prevent us from becoming a second-class nation. Chairman Conrad acknowledges that there is some truth to that rumor, because there is increasingly less hope for congressional agreement on key issues which affect our current budget and our status as a nation.

Our nearly-insurmountable debt-load now amounts on a per-family basis to over ten times what the average family earns per year, and it strains credibility to believe that we will be able to legislate our way out of this crisis. The suggestion of the Senate Budget Committee is that we grant special emergency powers to a bipartisan panel which is granted the ability to act for and with the full support of the congress to reduce budgets across a full spectrum of government services and to increase taxes as needed.

I applaud Chairman Conrad and the Senate Budget Committee for saying what needs to be said regarding the level of dysfunction in Congress. Do we really need to wait for the world to tell us that it is our inability to agree on important issues which is causing the further collapse of our system of government? I will go one step further and say that if Congress cannot find a way to agree and move towards a workable solution that they should all resign and go home and let a special bipartisan commission be appointed to do the job that they were supposed to do. Further, I suggest that Chairman Conrad and the current Senate Budget Committee BE THAT COMMISSION, and be granted all of the necessary powers to accomplish this task.

Mark Overt Skilbred