It seems to me that our elected officials don’t have a firm grasp on reality. They all seem to be under the impression that the average American (whoever that is) is more sensible when it comes to money and budgeting than our government is.

I want some of whatever they’re smoking.

For starters, Mr. & Mrs. Joe Average and their 1.5 kids don’t necessarily know how to live within their means. Show me someone who has a credit card or a bank loan, and I’ll show you someone who lives by deficit spending. In other words, they’re using borrowed money to purchase goods and services. Our entire economy is built on this practice. (Not having some kind of credit is practically un-American.)

Next, our elected officials don’t come from some special place where only bureaucrats live. They come from us. The General Public, the “people” referred to in “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. And we, the people, elect people to serve us as council members, mayors, governors, representatives, senators, and president and vice-president.

So I would love to see the President and Congress stop blowing smoke up the collective American rear-end, pretending that “the American people” have some special wisdom that they do not—and get serious about “The Budget”.

Until that happens, we’re going to continue living in a dysfunctional Fantasy-land, where we obsess over our financial problems while we fail to actually do anything about them.