BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from telemachus.com
There has been a lot of braying and bleating from the President to the leaders in Congress about the significance of this most-recently passed budget agreement that averted the shutdown of the federal government yesterday.
We think it is ‘a good thing’…but let’s not get carried away in the moment.
We like to put things in terms most people can understand. So today, let’s use M&Ms. Cause we all love M&Ms, right?
Think of the entire federal budget as being a $1 pack of plain M&Ms. (We just checked and they cost $1.23 but we are rounding down for clarity’s sake.)
We just did a little market-research and went out and bought a pack of plain M&Ms. Before we ate them, we counted and found only 55 M&Ms in each pack. So you are paying about 2 cents for each M&M which also means you are popping 4.36 calories into your mouth for each 2 cent M&M you eat.
Let’s say you budget $1.00 every day to buy your kid a pack of M&Ms. (Not a good idea but follow me here)
Because you have a ‘historic’ budget summit agreement with your spouse, and agree to ‘draconian’ cuts as these were described by some on the Democratic side, from now on, your son or daughter will only get 54.5 M&Ms to eat each day.
Not 55 as packaged in the bag. ‘Only’ 54.5.
This ‘historic’ budget agreement would cut ½ of 1 M&M out of your kid’s daily sweet tooth diet.
For the entire year.
‘Oh, mon Dieu! The pain! The sacrifice! How will my kid ever manage?
Just keep this in mind any time you hear non-budget balancers such as Senators Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer or President Obama, who signed this thing, wail about how ‘painful’ and ‘destructive’ any budget reductions are in Washington.
You know, to extend the analogy a bit further, maybe everyone needs to cut back at least 1/2 of 1 M&M per day. You will feel 1% better and your future health care costs that will be paid for by the taxpayer through Medicare might go down by 1% perhaps.
So that will be a win-win situation all around.
Editor’s note: Frank Hill was Chief of Staff to former North Carolina Congressman Alex McMillan and Senator Elizabeth Dole and is now Director of The Institute for the Public Trust in Charlotte , NC where he helps recruit and train new leaders to run for public office