BUDGETS, BUDGETS, EVERYWHERE
(with not a drop of commonsense among them)

We have a lot of smart people here in America but, somehow, the moment they’re elected to high office, they seem to lose whatever god-given brains they were born with. Especially when it comes to how to handle our tax dollars by coming up with sensible budgets to spend them.

While most of us may have to take our boots off to count to twenty, we all do understand certain fundamentals about such things. That is….you can’t spend more than you actually have and not risk getting into debt trouble. Unfortunately most of those whom we elect to handle such things for us seem to ignore that. Instead, they come up with budgets, budgets, everywhere, with not a drop of commonsense among them.

Most of us understand that:
a) Taxes are just the – membership dues- we pay to belong to this national club of ours.
b) Those dues create the revenues from which we expect our elected board of trustees to take care of what needs to be taken care of, and, to provide whatever amenities we want besides, all without maxing out our national credit card.
c) We expect our board of trustees to come up with properly determined dues rates to take care of these requirements, so that all of our members contribute proportionately according to their means, not arbitrarily because of those means.
d) We also expect our trustees to have the foresight to set aside some part of those revenues for a rainy day for some future need or emergency, and begin to pay down the debt load they’ve already accrued…. in our name.

So with these fundamentals in mind it shouldn’t be very complicated to figure out how to come up with a decent budget for our national club. In short, the first step to accomplish that is to just take a small percentage, right off the top of any available revenues, as the set aside. What will remain after that….will be our budget! We can then spend every last penny of it without worrying about going into debt. And if we find that after such a set aside, to pay down existing debt and build up a rainy day reserve, the remaining revenues are not enough to cover all our needs and wants, we members will then have to decide whether to raise our dues rates, or pare down some of our amenities, or perhaps a do little of both, rather than continuing to borrow and pile up debt, and its interest load, which will ultimately and inevitably bankrupt our club.

Few of us would have much argument about that. It’s just commonsense. But, I suppose that’s where we members of this national club of ours are mistaken in our understanding of such things. In politics, commonsense, is neither desired nor rewarded. After all, when it comes to getting elected, our board of trustees believes that demagoguery, and smoke and mirrors, is the only way to go. Maybe it’s time we members seriously consider replacing that entire board of trustees. That might give us a better club.

CENTURION