It is unlikely that Congress will come to agreement before January 1, 2013. Ergo, the middle class will take a hit – a number of hits. It will be challenging and we will prevail. We will feed, shelter, and educate our children; we will grow our businesses, careers, and gardens; and we will laugh, cry, and argue. There may be a pack of chewing gum in the stocking, but there will be no coal. There may be a used candle lit each day, but a candle will be lit. Prayers will be offered morning, noon, and night. Chanting and asanas will occur. Quantum mechanics, string theory, and Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity will continue to be studied and used as a basis to explain existence.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
Though Einsteinian intellect isn’t required, Congress doesn’t get it while dozens of leaders of major corporations do. These leaders, like the middle class, understand and support the need and the plans seeking tax increases on corporations and the very affluent, which I will define here as the top 2% of our country’s population. And we in the middle class know that spending cuts are also necessary and we’re willing to decrease funding for valuable programs. We already have and are still willing to go further but not without some give from the other side.
Accordingly, we’ll take care of our families and businesses the best way we can until Congress realizes that political posturing, scare tactics, and continued polarization and gridlock does not work for our country.
Furthermore, kudos to the women engaged in this conversation. I’ve heard repeatedly, from fiscally conservative women and women who are as liberal as liberal can be: “Me and my family will take the financial hit; we’ll work with that. Just don’t diminish our civil rights or the rights of others because those rights are more important than money.” That may sound “warm and fuzzy” to some, but the rights of others include the right to be recognized as a family, the right to determine how your family will grow in number, the right to determine how your child will be educated, and the right to determine how, where, and if you can practice and express your spiritual beliefs. Ergo, “warm and fuzzy” and critical are not mutually exclusive terms that can be applied to legal rights.
So, despite the posturing and “warm and fuzziness,” we know this isn’t quantum theory and when asked my thoughts, considering the millions of families who will be impacted but are resilient, with great umbrage toward Congress but great pride in the American spirit, I simply repeat the prudent words of a colleague who stated on a list serve during a mucky debate about guns and religion from which he refrained to participate, “Carry on.”
