Cleaning House With The Appropriate Products

When you have a fluffy, furry animal like my golden retriever, it is important to adhere to a rather strict vacuum schedule lest you end up with a collection of natural hair area rugs only Flokati could appreciate.   Having exhausted all my stall tactics today, it is time to change the vacuum bag and get started.  But wait..... an idea has popped into my head and I really must spit the words in the form of a blog post before I forget it!  The house cleaning will just have to wait!

The idea began to formulate yesterday when I heard bits and pieces of the Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio.  She had someone on who seemed to be whining about poor Obama and just how dirty "the house" was, economically speaking, when he was elected President and that the public needs to understand just how bad it could have been had he not stepped in when he did.  At that moment, I looked down at the bathroom floor and saw a clump of dog hair the size of a tumbleweed and thought, damn Diane, it's time to vacuum again!  Yes, I blame Diane and her whiny guest!  

No matter who was elected in 2008, I think we all knew it was not going to be a picnic in the park.  I also think all sane Americans would agree that both parties really want to help out fellow Americans by creating jobs, providing good education, great health services all in a safe and quality environment.  The problem is both parties have their own bucket of cleaning tools and sometimes, no matter how hard you scrub, if you are using the wrong products for the job, the "house" will never get clean.

Okay, to further illustrate......The floor is covered with caramel-colored dog hair (high unemployment rate), mud brought in from the daily walks on the golf course (expensive entitlements programs we cannot afford) and a little spilled lotion that spurted out unexpectedly (poor Global economies).  The Democrats have in their bucket a small tooth brush (shovel ready construction projects), some lemon oil ($850M in stimulus dollars) and a hammer (new regulations).  They take that brush and combine it with the lemon oil and brush for months so that now the hair and lotion are mixed with the the lemon oil and it actually seems worse.  So, they try hitting the hair-mud-lotion mixture with the hammer, but it is still a mess!  One politician and one economist suggest  we add some more oil.  Another thinks adding another small toothbrush could really help clean the mess.  They mean well, they are giving it 100% effort, but the problem has actually gotten worse.
   
In the Republicans' bucket all along has been equipped with a vacuum cleaner (reduced corporate tax rates), some organic floor cleaner (adjusted entitlement reform) and a mop (fiscally appropriate spending cuts).  With little trouble, the hair is removed and companies begin to expand and hire more employees. The mud is removed and the public confidence is restored and they start a big spurt of consumer spending. The lotion gets mopped up and everything smells fresh and inviting. 

This is not to say that one party's bucket is the only useful one.  Lord knows, we sure could have used the hammer during the Bush and Clinton years, when both were encouraging home ownership to every Tom, Dick and Harry who could go to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and sign on the dotted line!  It's just this time around, with the set of global issues at hand, we really need to use the tools that will help resolve the problems at hand.  I, for one, don't want to waste anymore time and effort using the wrong bucket to clean our "house". 

And see how clever I am?  I managed to delay my house cleaning for at least 30 minutes........