This week has reminded me of 1984 all over again. Back in that year, Walter Mondale ran against Ronald Reagan for the presidency. During one of the debates and in an effort to challenge the president on his agenda, Mondale asked President Reagan “where’s the beef?” This was a take off of the then recent Wendy’s commercial. This week brought this back to memory.
This week Taco Bell is being accused of not selling beef, but only 35% of their meat is really meat. Where’s the beef? Not sure if you are a Taco Bell fan or not, but an accusation like that, if it is validated, may make you want to reduce the times you make a run for the border.
Then we had the State of the Union address. President Obama stood before the joint house of Congress and spoke on his take of the current state of our country. After reading the speech, I am asking, “where’s the beef?”. Our country faces some very uncertain times due to the financial mismanagement of politicians from both parties. It appears, and I hope that I am wrong, that there is really nothing being done to curb the elected officials desire to continue to build our economic system on debt.
This week congressional budget officials estimate the 2011 deficit to be 1.5 TRILLION dollars. In case you have not looked at that number it looks like this – $1,500,000,000,000. Do you know how many tacos that would buy?
Seriously, something has to be done. I do not recall the president mentioning how his administration plans to get some 15 million unemployed workers back to work. I did not see anything tangible about spending cuts to get our budget and debt under control. I did see that he is calling on a five year spending freeze. Hello? The spending has increased more than 80% over the last couple of years. Where are the cuts or in increased income?
Honestly, this should make you mad – this is not a republican or democrat thing. This is financial management and NOT SPENDING MORE THAN YOU HAVE COMING IN.
You need to manage your personal finances, your personal economy, better than those in Washington manage ours national finances. Do not take your lessons from them!