Sometimes I really get the impression that the people running our country do not have a clue what they are doing. The Senate and the House are both cutting social programs and student loans while at the same time they are cutting taxes. Now I know there is more to it than that, I'm not an idiot. Nothing is rarely as clear as the sound bites portrays it. Some of the tax cuts are designed to help spur growth specifically in the Gulf Coast, and some of the cuts in the social programs are really just scaling back yearly increases-not decreasing the benefits. The real news is always somewhere in the middle.

That said, we are at war with troops in more than one country. We have just survived natural disasters that have destroyed cities and displaced many of our poorest citizens. There is this ostrich-like feel that we can handle all of these financial disasters without any type of real sacrifice, without any loss of profits.

Maybe, just maybe, it might be time to start considering cutting back on the tax breaks...

Maybe, just maybe, this is not the time to decrease the money spent on social programs.

Maybe, just maybe, we could raise the minimum wage instead of continuing to promise that someday when the economy gets better wages will get better on their own.

I don't care what sort of degree in economics you have, I don't care how many books you have written. I don't care if you can show me four kinds of bar graphs and pie graphs explaining how cutting taxes helps the economy. Cutting taxes is not the answer to every economic problem. Cutting taxes will not guarantee that life will get better for the poor.

Maybe, just maybe, we could stop saying and doing the same things and expecting different results.

Thanks for reading,

AC