Election-year grandstanding

With the imminent failure of the Congressional supercommittee, it should trigger the automatic spending cuts in the Department of Defense and the Medicare program.

These two spending giants were targeted because that's where a huge chunk of the federal spending is aimed.

But what about the Department of Education, Housing and Urban Development and the Agriculture Department?

In discussing our economic woes, we no longer talk in terms of millions or even small paltry lower-digit billions. We've stepped into the world of hundreds of billions and trillions. And quite frankly, when you reach that level of spending, most of us are simply lost.

There is already discussion on maneuvers to undo the automatic cuts given the super committee's failures thus far. If that discussion gains momentum, I would hope there exists a mechanism to remove all seated members of Congress. Let's face it, it's doubtful if new faces could do worse than what we are seeing today.

By including only Defense and Medicare in the upcoming cuts and ignoring HUD, ag and education, we still ignore spending monsters which deliver marginal results.

The grand design of the Department of Education was to oversee our system of education and bring federal-based solutions.

So how's that working?

Our measurable achievements in education continue to show declines in many categories and still we fork over hundreds of billions of dollars to an obviously failed model.

The same story could apply to Housing and Urban Development which has become a cesspool of fraud and abuse.

Perhaps this collective ignorance on the part of our federal government is fueled by election year grandstanding. Maybe yet another election will bring fresh voices to the discussion and some late-blooming reality will begin to set in.

We should have seen this coming. It was so obvious and yet we ignored the writing on the wall.

When the Bowles-Simpson report was issued and then ignored, we should have been paying attention. This bipartisan committee had no worries about elections and currying favor with voters. Instead they were tasked with the job of making an honest assessment of our economy and recommending the tough changes required to right our ship of state.

But the administration clearly wanted nothing of this group other than political coverage. And when their report was issued, they were thanked for their service and the report began gathering dust on a shelf.

Why were we not paying attention? This administration wants nothing of economic sanity -- that much is abundantly clear. This administration wants to transform this nation into a new model fashioned after much of Europe where the state holds all of the cards.

Well, how's that working?