Another Congressional Failure Buried by the Typically Sleeping Media — a Budget Proposal Based on the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Plan Failed Passage in the House of Representatives 38 to 382

© 2012 Peter Free

 

30 March 2012

 

 

You would think that someone whose head was not buried in their nether end would have reported Wednesday’s Simpson-Bowles story, but (sadly) mostly not

 

Keeping up with genuinely significant news would have required that the media display an un-American ability to pay attention for more than 5 seconds.

 

Two days ago, a budget proposal based on the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan failed passage in the House of Representatives by 38 – 382.

 

Note

 

Among the 38 ayes were 22 Democrats and 16 Republicans.

 

Given that it has been Republicans, who have been screechingly most voluble about the need for deficit reduction, their minority among the affirmative votes is indicative of that Party’s continually jaw-dropping hypocrisy.

 

But the mainstream media mostly left this vote unreported.

 

And virtually no one reported on the symbolic value this outcome has in representing the ineptitude of our destructively ineffectual American leadership.

 

 

Note

For an example of how the media could have handled informatively reporting the vote, see:

 

Jeff Mapes, Kurt Schrader casts lonely vote for Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, Oregonian at OregonLive.com (29 March 2012)

 

 

 

“So, Pete, what is Simpson – Bowles?”

 

Remember back to when President Obama initiated a ploy to delay serious talk about ways to reduce deficit spending?  He did what the Executive and Congress always do, he appointed a panel to investigate and make recommendations.

 

This group was formally called, “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” but was popularly known as “Simpson – Bowles,” after its two co-chairs.

 

The Commission’s report came out in December 2010.

 

Not surprisingly, given the straight-forward integrity of the Commission’s co-chairs, it was a serious and fair-minded proposal.

 

But, being serious, the Simpson-Bowles recommendations were uniformly ignored.  This ability to turn a blind eye and empty head is, after all, the purpose to appointing commissions.  Their work gives us the illusion that we can wipe our behinds, without Mommy being in attendance, even while simultaneously continuing to soil the path behind us, wherever we go.

 

 

The message lies in the lopsided-ness of the House vote

 

So, Wednesday, more than one year after the Simpson-Bowles recommendations arrived, the House finally decided to vote on significant aspects of them.  And the President was nowhere in sight.

 

The House did what Congress reliably does in situations in which leadership and sound action are required — nothing.  This herd of do-nothing self-dealers voted by an overwhelmingly one-sided margin. The gap clearly indicates how many unproductive public-trough-guzzlers we foolishly subsidize.

 

 

The moral? — Why bother to serve America with integrity, when you can get elected to office instead, spout nonsense, produce nothing, and go home rich?

 

That is why the Simpson-Bowles House of Representatives vote should have been widely reported.

 

And it is equally why it was not.  No one wants to look at how lost and dysfunctional the United States has become in the Twenty-First Century.