Continuing Budget Saga--Now A Word From My "Beloved" Republicans

I woke in the middle of the night and clicked on C-Span. Was hopin' it would put me back to sleep, I guess. The Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin was the lone person on the current panel answering questions regarding the effect on our economy of illegal aliens with regard to budgetary forcasting. I thought, aha!, this might be the root of my mysterious budget call yesterday.

Everyone asking questions was a Democrat and each was concerned with the impact of illegals on native workers' earnings, displacement of workers, border security, Katrina victims and how they figured into displacement. One even suggested that we should make certain that second generation illegals should be given special grants to attain higher education so they could pay more into the system!!!

One woman representative from the midwest (wish I had my pen handy to write her name and state down) asked some poignant questions. What happens to employers when illegals are discovered on the payroll? Are there fines? Do we have an accounting of how much money the fines total? What do we do if the employers are repeaters? What do we do when we find that employers knowingly solicit unauthorized workers for employment? She asked if we were punishing the recruited, but not the recruiters. She emphasized that we need to know the enforcement impact on both employers and recruited, as well as on the economy.

The elephant standing in the middle of the room that no one mentioned is that we are once again discussing how to make illegals legal--and as easily as we can. We are spending untold dollars holding hearings about how to get the illegals around the law. How to give them more benefits than they are already hornswaggling us out of in ways that are against the law. Do you suppose the employers/recruiters will hire the same people once they become legal citizens and want a higher wage like all others legal citizens? Or do you think they will be on the unemployment rolls?

I'm still not sure if this discussion is related to my call. I do have strong opinions about giving non-citizens free gifts and encouragement to "stay on" when they manage to outwit our legal system. This is not just a logistical issue (Which is easier now that they are here?). This is a respect for the country and its laws and values issue. (How could anyone think otherwise?!) Has being overly permissive paid off for anyone ever? Is not self-control, respect for those around you, common courtesy, BEING LEGAL important? Of course, I get it, if you need something, you just help yourself. That's where looting comes from, and why our legal system is filled with people who want things they do not want bad enough to work for.
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The following morning.....
This morning, I logged on and I think the mystery call is now finally solved! It makes perfect sense that it's the Deficit Reduction Act that my automated phone call two days ago urged me to react to when connecting me to the Congressman's office.

Here's the Administration skinny on it (and I'm glad I said what I did after all--though I would have been more adamant with more info under my hat): "The Deficit Reduction Act, which proposes $54 billion in cuts to federal pork spending is stalled in the U.S. House of Representatives. Email your member of Congress today and tell them to vote now to cut spending! The current deficit hovers at $8 TRILLION, and this bill is a good - albeit small - step toward reining in runaway federal spending and offsetting the costs of Hurricane Katrina relief.

Despite being one of the smallest deficit reduction attempts in recent administrations (recent Democratic Congresses and administrations have passed nearly double the amount in spending cuts), many Republican House members are wavering and threatening to postpone or vote no on the proposal. This is an embarrassment to the party claiming to be committed to limited government.

Call your Representatives and tell them to bring the Deficit Reduction Act to a vote NOW and vote YES. They should continue to look for ways to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. This bill is just one small step in the right direction. Email your representative and call Speaker Dennis Hastert at 202-225-2976 and encourage him to bring the proposal to a vote."

I agree wholeheartedly with the cuts in this Act. Bring this to a vote and vote yes to cut back on domestic spending. I also agree with the method of recruiting support for it. This came from a conservative newsletter I receive. It didn't connect me automatically without time to research the issue if I wanted to. I think it's a fairer way to recruit support. It laid out its position and gave me the name of the Act and time to research it before responding. The phone call caused a sense of urgency and asked me to take uninformed action immediately.

About reducing the deficit. I understand that our gross national product is huge and the economy is big too, and that the deficit is, in ratio, big but not as bad for us since we can basically afford mortgaging it long term.

Putting it simply, if you had an income of $100 million per year and your friend had an income of $50,000 per year and you each applied for a $500,000 mortgage, the ratio to your income doesn't have the same impact on your bottom line as it does for your friend's bottom line.

Nevertheless, we are in a time of War with huge expenditures and we each need to do our part at home to conserve resources where possible. Don't curtail spending--business or personal--but give aways and budgetary pork need to be cut. So do silly hearings about common sense issues like whether or not illegal aliens should be sent home. We cannot afford to take in people who do not respect the laws of this country regardless of difficulty in the logistics to do so.