CHUCK MOSS

   ^{State Representative    40th District}

Toll-Free  877-707-MOSS

^{CONTACT ME!              STATE OF MICHIGAN             EYE ON OAKLAND}

I'm With Chuck!! 

Join the Reality Party!!!

COLUMNS

You Gotta Be Kidding!!!

DO WHAT I DO, NOT WHAT I SAY, DEPT. 

We Need A Reality Party!

NEEDED: A REALITY PARTY

            So let me get this straight. In the Governor's State of the State speech, we heard how we're going to spend---lets see---$150 million for road building, $800 million for infrastructure, $300 million for new businesses in Michigan, $50 million for tourism promotion. Plus there's hundreds of millions more dollars in proposed school programs while we have 25,000 fewer kids in the system.

EVERY KID AN ALL "A" STUDENT!!!!

            We're going to have "a job for every worker." Really? Doing what…and for whom? There's a $4,000 per kid scholarship for every child to attend college or post high school tech training. Really? Including subliterate high school dropouts? We’re going to offer low interest Adjustable Rate Mortgages to homeowners having trouble making payments, and refinance mortgages for folks who are in foreclosure. Really? Lansing will become a free bank…using what for money? We’re going to grow jobs by raiding pension funds for speculative venture capital. Really? And if those investments fail?

            And we're going to do all that without a tax hike or fee increase? Any measures--real or speculative--which produce savings, will be plowed back into spending, much of it to start new programs that never die and grow forever. But it won’t cost us anything.

NOT A PEEP ABOUT OUR DEBT!

            Meantime, there was not a peep about our  post employment benefits liability. This is a truly scary number: the latest figure is over  $22 Billion-yes, that's BILLION in unfunded liability. If not addressed and we stay in the current pay-as-you-go program, that figure can rise as high as $40 billion. The Governor's new proposed budget does not even begin to address this crushing debt to our retirees. It doesn’t even recognize it.

RETREAT FROM REALITY.

            This isn’t just political pandering, grandstanding, or demagoguery, this is a wholesale retreat from reality.

            But raise your voice against this severe, ongoing fiscal mismanagement, and you’ll get called “partisan.” The people want “Bi-partisanship,” and an end to disputes. But is dispensing group hugs while the car crashes over the cliff, really the bi-partisanship governance people say they want? Besides,  there’s a different way.

REAL BIPARTISANSHIP

             I sit on a House retiree benefits committee that is squarely facing the music, and its chaired by a very liberal Democrat. Right now there are more than a few Dems who are ready to deal with facts, harsh though they are. There are Republicans who ignore basic economic truths and gloss over the nasty facts, too. Maybe the line isn’t R or D.

            Maybe the real partisanship isn't Dem and GOP, but a willingness to deal with reality. When you get right down to it, maybe warm, fuzzy, bi-partisanly bi-partisaness that lives in fantasy land, isn’t the answer. Maybe what we need is the Reality Party, open to both Dems and GOP. On the other side we can have the Wishful Thinking Fantasy Party (any bets on who leads it?)

WE NEED A REALITY PARTY!

            We need a Reality Party, or at least a coalition. Michigan has lots of folks on both sides of the spectrum who can read a balance sheet and comprehend basic economics. Elephants and donkeys both know you can’t overspend your checkbook—or your campaign account—for years. Forget Rs and Ds. It’s time for the GOP and Dem wings of the Reality Party to start reaching out and working together, for all our sakes.

            You see, there aren't any Republican numbers or Democrat numbers--just valid ones. The balance sheet doesn’t respect any politics, just hard, cold arithmetic. Evasion of reality has no Democratic or Republican monopoly. Honest folks who can look facts in the eye aren’t the sole province of either side. So let’s form a Reality Party. Michigan is really in free fall, and its time for the Reality Republicans and the Reality Democrats to reach across the aisle and build some reality-based policies before we really do go splat all over the objectively undeniable pavement.  

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