Yesterday, we had a staff meeting during the State of the Union address. There were technical difficulties with our powerpoint slides, so we watched the address while we waited for them to be worked out. My boss tried to explain our current fiscal reality to our Korean coworkers. In the meantime, in the background there's this perfect image illustrating the problem: that of John Boehner sitting behind the president with this petulant expression on his face.
John Boehner and his antics have helped make the 112th Congress both one of the
least productive and
least popular in history. It's not hard to see why. He and his cohorts regularly pull a series of political stunts in an attempt to drum up displeasure for president Obama. Political stunts, you say? Just another certainty on Capitol Hill. Well, yes. What really drives me mad is that the demonized "government spending" that we need to control, so much, apparently, that Congress refuses to compromise on a budget, is not a nebulous concept to me. It's my paycheck, and that of my staff.
Now we are trying to drum up morale in the face of furloughs and a hiring freeze, yet again. If we are determined to live in a new fiscal reality, let's cut our budget and be done with it--preferably handing the new budget back to us at the beginning of the fiscal year (ha!). It's disheartening that my own government is willing to pay chicken with my paycheck, and the 20% pay cut we all face if we furlough is not insignificant. It's not just "government spending." It's the livelihoods of myself and 750,000 people. And yet, it's a prop for yet another ridiculous cat fight on Capitol Hill. Thanks, Congress.
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