Ahead of Schedule and Under Budget

At a press conference Thursday morning, Vice President Elect Mike Pence announced that the transition team had finished it’s business “Ahead of schedule and under budget”.

While “Make America Great Again” has been the motto of the Trump campaign, and y, the theme of the new administration, it would be a new experience hearing “ahead of schedule and under budget” even once, let alone consistently.

Pence said they were returning 20% of their funding to the treasury because it was unused! That’s $1.2 million! This is not normal for government. How many agencies have we heard were holding conferences in Las Vegas spending millions of dollars and the conferences are not something needed. Or bonuses paid out to agencies that have cost overruns and didn’t accomplish the jobs they were supposed to do? Or ask yourself how much the Obama’s spend on their vacations. Remember the dog having his own flight to Martha’s Vineyard a couple of years ago?

So far, the Trump/Pence administration is living up to their word. Will this continue? There’s good news in this answer. At noon Friday it begins as the titles are changed to “Former” President Barack Hussein Obama and from “President-Elect” to “President” Donald J. Trump.

Following is a portion of a speech given by a former President that took over with similar problems. Hopefully, the Trump administration will believe and act as that president did. I’m sure you’ll recognize who it is quickly.

“The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we've had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.”

If you don’t recognize it, that was President Reagan from his inaugural address in 1981. Trump will have to do better because while tax cuts were passed spending was not reigned in.

It’s finally time to find out because  at noon on Friday, Trump will be sworn in as the 45^th President and Obama finally will be gone.

Trump has his work cut out for him, but he has a habit of “ahead of schedule and under budget”. If he continues that America will be great again.

You’re welcome to comment.

Brett