Cutting out the Middleman

Everybody agrees our Country has a serious debt problem. The projected shortfall between revenues and spending is expected to grow to $1.625 Trillion this year. That's One Thousand Six Hundred Twenty Five Billion bucks! That equals all Federal expenditures just 14 short years ago. We are over $14.2 Trillion in debt, mostly to China, Japan and England. It won't be long before our debt eclipses our Gross National Product, which would put us in Greece and Ireland territory. That's not a good territory to find oneself. Not good, indeed.

So, I got to thinking. As a businessman, how I could use good business practices to reduce costs, or increase revenues, or both, without raising taxes and strangling the engine of productivity. And I think I've lit upon a rather creative solution to at least a piece of our problem.

We provide economic aid to scores of countries each and every year. Although it amounts to less than 1% of all spending, it's still a number in the range of $65 Billion per year, which is some pretty serious money. For instance, we send Egypt a care package to the tune of $1.2 Billion a year. Egypt. That's the same country which just ousted its dictator and replaced him and the constitution with some army generals. And within a few months, the army will likely be replaced by a mullah or two. But that's okay. Maybe they will be friendly mullahs. We like mullahs, don't we? It worked so very well in Iran, didn't it? But in the meantime, it makes no sense to me that we borrow money from China so we can send it to Egypt, and Jordan, and Chad, and Namibia, and Fiji and all those other countries. So here's the plan: We do what businesses do every day. We cut out the middleman. Everybody knows that doing so lowers costs and streamlines operations. We simply ask China to send the money straight to Egypt! Instead of laundering it through the Department of the Treasury and the State Department, and the Democratic National Committee, our inscrutable friends should send it straight to Egypt's army! We ought to be able to lay off hundreds, maybe even thousands of Federal public sector union employees who will no longer be needed to massage and redistribute China's money.

Oh, wait a minute. Considering that the Feds have added 200,000 new union employees since January 20, 2008, and appear dead set on adding more, the likelihood of any of them being laid off is somewhere between slim and none. And Slim, as they say, is out of town. Oh well, never mind…