Greg Awtry

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) works with 38 countries supplying data they can use to improve policy decisions. They recently released data showing the U.S. ranked 28th out of 37 OECD countries in numeracy abilities. In other words, how well do American adults do math. Other surveys revealed 40 percent of American adults are at or below Level One, out of six levels, meaning they might be unable to perform basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

More researchers looked into professions that do not require significant math skills and listed jobs such as Security Officers, Editorial Managers, Therapists, Music Teachers, Marketing Managers, Historians, and Art Directors. Entry-level jobs listed were Garbage collectors, Grocery Baggers, Food Servers, and Line Cooks.

All these jobs are necessary, but there was one glaring omission I noticed as I read through these lists. The one job missing was a United States Congressperson. Let me explain. If a Congressperson had any sense of basic math, and I am talking about simple addition and subtraction, they wouldn’t do the following.

They wouldn’t go 30 years in a row not turning in a federal budget on time.

They wouldn’t go 25 years in row not turning in a balanced budget.

They wouldn’t spend $1.8 trillion dollars more then they took in during last twelve months.

They wouldn’t borrow $3.5 million dollars a MINUTE, like they are doing now.

And for certain, if they had any idea about basic math problems, they wouldn’t pile $37 trillion dollars of national debt onto our children, grandchildren and millions of Americans not even born yet.

And one more; they would never close down the government because they couldn’t agree on how to spend our money; they key word being “our” money, not theirs.

You see, over half the members of Congress are millionaires, so issues like paying rent each month, paying high heath care bills, buying groceries, paying insurance premiums, saving money for college and filling up gas tanks doesn’t mean much to them. Spending our money comes easy for them so they can come home and tell us everything they “bought” for us while at the same time asking us for campaign donations so they can get reelected so they can spend even more of our money. And if that’s not enough, they have to toe the party line so they can get more campaign money from their political party. It’s all too obvious the only math they fully understand is when it’s destined for their campaigns.

Are we finally seeing the picture? Let’s face it; Congress is all consumed with managing money, theirs not ours, yet constantly practices fiscal insubordination when it comes to managing our country’s finances. If they put as much energy into working together to get us out of the pending debt crisis, as they do trying to get reelected, we wouldn’t have to sit back and watch them close down our government over budget issues. We wouldn’t have our military personnel or the hundreds of thousands of non-essential government employees going without paychecks. By the way, Senators and Congresspersons do get paid during the shutdown. How convenient for them.

When asked who is to blame for the shutdown, to no-one’s surprise, the Democrats blame the Republicans, the Republicans blame the Democrats and the Independents blame both parties. I agree with all three of them!

So where do we go from here. I will tell you. Congress will not pass a budget. They will finally agree to some sort of Continuing Resolution which is Washington-speak for kicking the can down the road so they can continue doing what they always do, spend money we don’t have and beg us to vote for them next year. The sad part about all this is we will. We always do. Last November, with only a 19 percent Congressional approval rating, we reelected 97 percent of the incumbents. The other sad part is that Congress knows this too and can basically do whatever they want knowing the chances are high that we will reelect them anyway.

If we have learned anything over the past 30 years, it’s that Congress is broken and can’t self-correct. Party leadership won’t allow that. We have to do that for them. We deserve much better, our country deserves much better and leaving our future in the hands of the current crop of mathematical-disabled politicians cannot go on, if for no other reason than the four minutes you spent reading this column Congress borrowed and additional $14 million dollars from your and my grandchildren! And by this time tomorrow, just twenty-four hours from now, Congress will have borrowed another $5 billion dollars, and the same amount the next day and the day after that, with no idea or intention of ever paying it off!

Folks, in short, that’s no way to run a country. If you think it’s okay to steal money from our grandkids, let me know. If you have a way to stop this madness, let me know at gregawtry@awtry.com.