It Appears that the Problem with the United States is . . . .

Washington.  Politics has gotten in the way of doing the things we need to do to eliminate the economic crisis of the bloated federal budget and the out of control spending of Washington.

Imagine if I had bought millions of dollars worth of beer hats.  That's right beer hats.  Even though some people have had fun-I guess-with a novelty like this in the past, does anyone really actually need a beer hat?  If a person wishes to drink beer, all they have to do is pour the beer in a glass-or leave it in a can-and lift the beer to their mouth with their hand.  No one actually needs a hat to dispense beer.  Now imagine if the government was buying up all the beer hats, and beer hat companies and the people who use the completely redundant beer hats (redundant as in unnecessary, because people can drink with their hands) complained and caterwauled because the government was no longer buying their beer hats.  What if the government in the meantime had a budgetary crisis and complained that they couldn't cut on beer hats because people would complain, and in the meantime there were people who were using them?  Its all completely ludicrous isn't it?

However, there really are government programs full of redundancies that no one is willing to cut for fear that people will complain and will be out on particular services.  The answer is that something else will take the places of those redundant programs.  Either the free-market will fill in the missing "beer-hat" niche or no one will bother buying the proverbial "beer hats" because they find them to be redundant and unnecessary anyway.

We need more straight talking politicians who will get tough with special interests and themselves and take a good hard look at the programs that they're paying for.  It's time for all of us to tighten our belts, not just the American people, but the government and the special interests as well.

Take a look at this article: 

http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2011/02/02/i_can_balance_the_budget