How Washington is Like Products Sold on TV

By Brendan Jennings

I love TV commercials that sell items you can order only by phone. Items that will relieve you of the existential hell in which you’ve been living.
 
You know the ones I’m describing? The ones with the comical actors whose emphatic expressions make William Shatner look low-key by comparison? The ones with the actors who all knowingly nod when they finally have the solution in hand?

For the man who uses garden shears to trim his nose hair? The MicroTouch all-in-one personal hair trimmer allows men to delicately trim hair from their nose and nether regions as well as cleaning up that forest of unsightly back hair!

Looking to make the perfect 10-minute pasta without the unimaginable investment in time and complexity of boiling water in a pan, cooking the pasta then draining it in a colander? Zap your way to fresh-tasting freedom with the Pasta Express!

Tired of putting up with your husband’s snoring or want to listen to what your new neighbors are saying about you? No worries! Just put Listen Up in your pocket, plug in the earphones and the mini amplifier will enable you to ignore your husband and report your neighbors to Homeland Security!

Each commercial shows actors expressing frustration and angst, not to mention incompetence, going through the typical day-to-day challenges we all face. Only the actors make it seem like they are experiencing waterboarding or the seventh circle of hell. Then, with the amazing, time-saving, money-back-guarantee product in hand – Eureka! The crops are saved! The stars are aligned! Life has new meaning!

Well, something like that is happening with the news media today. They call it “The Fiscal Cliff.” They make it sound like the same kind of hell-on-earth scenario that those cheesy as-seen-on-TV commercials use to attract their customers. But stop and think about it. What today they are calling “The Fiscal Cliff” was touted last year by the White House as a bipartisan “Win for the Economy and Budget Discipline.”

When all the talking heads agree in their groupthink way about a national problem, I start to get antsy. What are they selling us instead? Yes, they talk about raising taxes, about getting more revenue for government coffers. But why is nobody speaking up about the spending cuts that MUST be a part of any “balanced” plan?

Go back to the last few election cycles and consider what candidates in BOTH parties have been saying and selling to the American people.

“We have to get spending under control.”

“Our national debt will require us to raise taxes.”

Well, the only plan that’s on the table now is last year’s bipartisan agreement that slashes spending and raises taxes. It’s not the most appealing prospect, but no treatment for our overspending binges of the last 40+ years will be painless.

But experience shows that while taxes always get raised immediately, spending cuts almost never happen.

And that’s the game going down in Washington now.

Hold on to your wallets, build up your stockpiles and stand by for Uncle to strip you of more of what you work for. Hey, in the 21^st Century, it’s the American Way!