If you felt sick and went to your doctor would you allow him or her to give you a shot without examining you first? If your car was making a funny sound would you allow your mechanic to replace the engine without first checking under the hood? Would you be pleased if your government made spending decisions without conducting research to determine how or if it made sense to spend it in a particular manner?
Every year the Census Bureau conducts the American Community Survey which collects data on subjects that include income, living arrangements, commuting patterns and disabilities. The Census Bureau then synthesizes the data to help decide where to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
Would it make sense to remove certain bus transit routes without first determining how many people were utilizing them first? Maybe we should be adding more routes instead of eliminating services. Maybe more commuters would use mass transit if more public parking spaces were available. Do Federal agencies need to hire more people who speak a particular language to make the agency more user-friend to the public and would that in turn make the agency more efficient? Would you be happy if your tax dollars were spent to hire Spanish-speaking customer service personnel as opposed to personnel who spoke Korean in a neighborhood with a growing Korean population You get my point.
On May 9th, Congressman Garrett and his Republican colleagues voted to eliminate the survey in order to save $242 million a year. Here’s what Garrett had to say: ”Our country is broke. With almost $16 trillion of debt on the books and an annual budget deficit of $1 trillion, we cannot continue spending money we don’t have. Regardless of the merits of the survey, we can’t afford it anymore.” Sounds great on the surface. It certainly makes sense to cut funding for non-essential programs in an economic downturn, and $242 million is not an insignificant amount by anyone’s measurement.
Unfortunately, Mr. Garrett is so desperate to cut spending which he deems to be unnecessary that he either can’t or won’t stop to think of the long-term damage that eliminating this survey will do. This survey is equivalent to the maps and GPS system one would use to navigate a cross-country road trip. You know where you need to go, and you have a general idea of where it is. But without the GPS, you’ll waste a lot of time, energy, gasoline, money and who knows what else just to get into the area where you want to be. Chances are you’ll never find the exact address you set out to locate. What’s so hard about asking directions, Mr. Garrett?
Republicans are great at sounding tough when it comes to protecting our tax dollars. Unfortunately, they are penny-wise and pound-foolish. It’s a pattern they’ve demonstrated time and time again. Not funding infrastructure bills means less money out-of-pocket today and no high-speed rail tomorrow. Eliminating the Affordable Care Act today means more visits to emergency rooms for the uninsured. We as taxpayers get to pay those bills tomorrow. Why are those people in the business community who are so revered by Scott Garrett unable to get their message across to the man? It’s called investment, Mr. Garrett. Businesses budget and plan for it everyday.
If Mr. Garrett was as concerned as professes to be about the gap between what the government takes in and what it spends, he fight against extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. He’d support the Affordable Care Act and it’s projected $221 billion in savings over the next decade. He would never have voted for putting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on our credit cards. Mr. Garrett, you are not a serious politician; you’re just a dangerous one. It’s time to retire Scott Garrett. The next step in that process takes place tomorrow. Please vote. Make your voices heard.
Filed under: Budget Deficit, Economy, Just Plain Wrong Image may be NSFW.
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