Washington's Kitchen Table Is Broken

Campaign rhetoric about kitchen table solutions largely forgotten in the rush to impoverishment

Just a few months ago, politicians of all stripes, running on the national level, were reminding voters what it was like to face tough problems, and calling to mind those tough decisions we the people frequently face at the proverbial kitchen table.

We were assured by each and every one of those earnest would-be public servants that if elected, they would be the ones we could count on to make common sense choices that we ourselves would make.

With those assurances in mind, let's look at the decisions many working folk now face, and compare them to the choices being made in our Capitol.


Let's suppose that we run a small business that has fallen on hard times. Profits are down, bills are piling up and the short term market for our services doesn't look all that bright.

The solution for most of us might be to take a hard look at our business, and discontinue services that weren't profitable. To attract new business, we might reduce the profit margin on services that were making money. We could sell off some assets, cut cost everywhere possible, and even, as a last resort, reduce payroll by cutting hours or jobs.

Hard choices, yes, and painful for small business owners who think of employees as friends and family. But those are the choices that reality gives us, and those are the ones we make.

But in Washington, they see a different set of options.

Their answer to mounting debt and blatant evidence of program failures is to borrow money and increase funding to those programs. Further, since the credit is so easy to find, they're going to introduce a few new programs modeled after the ones that don't work.

The spending bill that is being rushed through Congress right now, is tantamount to an ailing small business borrowing money to replace the office carpet and pave the driveway. It just doesn't make sense.

What's worse, if that business manages to keep the doors open, the debt will come back to haunt it, crippling it's competitiveness in the near future.

What is needed now is some real kitchen table logic. What would work are tax cuts and construction incentives to get productive money flowing from the private sector toward projects that promise a profit.

The free market is not evil. Left to it's own devices, without government interference, it is inherently successful. Laws and proper regulation are needed to prevent abuses by those who won't play fair, but programs that attempt to warp capitalism into some sort of social program cause upsets in the basic motive, and retard the entire system.

Rather than building a larger safety net that insures more people will fall into it, let's build pipelines and refineries that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Instead of shelving exploration and drilling programs, let's move regulatory roadblocks out of the way, and let those programs flourish.

Infrastructure? Yes, we should modernize that. But let's not call museums and dog parks 'infrastructure'. Instead, give that tag to power lines, communication pathways and high speed railways aimed at moving freight. All generate long term jobs, and all attract private investors looking for future profits.

If Washington insists on spending money we don't have, it should be spent on strengthening control of our southern border, thereby reducing illegal immigration that costs us billions in lost taxes and provided services each year. Instead of hiring more government bureaucrats, hire agents and technologies that make enforcing our immigration laws feasible.

Education, too, could be changed to attract private investment. Vocational training at the high school level would give graduates who don't attend college the chance to move into good paying jobs, and provide industry with a much needed infusion of young, skilled workers.

In short, let's do in Washington what we would do at home. Make sense.