Somebody, don't just sit something, do there

     While the rest of us try to hold down a job, or protect meager means in an uncertain economic environment that is apparently run by computers that buy and sell on the stock market in microseconds to make -- or lose -- pennies a million times a day, The President of The United States will play a round of golf with the Republican Speaker of the House to discuss their respective positions on debt ceilings, tax cuts, spending cuts, economic stimulus, jobs creation.
     I can hardly wait for the next news headlines, which will be up in about 35 seconds.
     This is the 10th anniversary of what has come to be known as the "Bush tax cuts," an across the board 10-percent slash in taxes that was heralded as the way to save the American economy from the reckless policies of the Bill Clinton era, which had left us with a disgraceful surplus. Conservatives said that money should not be in a govmint account; it belonged to the pipple, so give it back -- cut taxes.
     Less that two years later, the country was in debt again, borrowing to pay bills, but by golly, we had a tax cut. And the pipple's money was not, repeat NOT being budgeted to pay for waging war in Iraq and elsewhere. It was just being borrowed, and spent, and gone, but at least the govmint did not raise taxes.
     So here we are, a decade later, and the tax-cutting, jobs-creating conservatives in public office at all levels are cutting jobs to save money. The jobs they're cutting are those of the people who can least afford to be laid off -- the roads workers, public works employees, people who mow the weeds, paint, pick up trash, maintain the investment in public roads and buildings, run schools and libraries and parks -- you know, things real people don't care about.
     There is still money for good conservatives in staff positions, management jobs, advisory levels.
     Maybe one of those advisor/thinker types of staffers will inspire a high-ranking partisan on one side or the other to propose that former President Bill Clinton, the last chief executive with a balanced budget, head a Medicare and Health Care Reform commission, with an eye to improving efficiency in services and cutting costs where possible.
     The idea would be to use the health care reform plan passed by Congress and signed by President Obama, combine some of the ideas in the plan put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan (except for that part where we make it all disappear) with the goal of preserving and improving, building upon, the best of what we have.
     Only the most recalcitrant throwbacks to Davey Crockett models of government fail to notice that the United States is gradually, slowly, belatedly, catching up to dealing with health care issues for growing and increasingly complex societies under the umbrella of one nation. So we are going to have something more "govmit-run" than Ma and Pa Trailblazer did.
     Oh, I know; I've seen the bumper-stickers, We Can Take America Back, but the question remains, "Take it back from whom?"
     The simple answers reflected by bumper-sticker mentality will not fix anything, but time and cirumstance has a way of filling in where a plan is lacking.
     I can promise you this: Whatever finally works, what the wingers now call "Obamacare" will be claimed by many fathers.