Kitchen table talk: budget lies.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS - Viewpoint essay

OUR ELECTED LEADERSHIP, particularly on the liberal side of the spectrum, but disappointingly so on the self-identified conservative side as well, long has clung to the conceit that they are having serious conversations about the national budget (and state, county, and local ones as well), just as we little people must "around the kitchen table."

This would be laughable if the situation were not so dire. Around our kitchen table, we do not make decisions like, well, we have to cut the grocery budget by 10%, and so one of you kids will have to go hungry twice a week to accommodate that fact. We do not forego bathing; we shorten showers. We wring a little more out of items before we replace. We switch to generic brands; move from fresh goods to canned vegetables when it is cheaper; stretch less expensive cuts of meat with eggs, grains, and seasonings; and scale back on treats and other extras. We assume cutbacks affect the entire family. With apologies to P.J. O'Rourke and his excellent 1991 book, A Parliament of Whores, the EJ. Rule of Circumcision asserts you can take 10% off the top of anything.

Our elected officials passionately are resistant to merely circumcising excessive spending. They could not possibly streamline government departments, perhaps, for example, by combining many social programs under one umbrella, or subsuming the BATFE into the FBI. At every level, governments pretend that the only alternative is to slice "vital" services. What the devil is the government doing that is not vital? Next time there is a snow day in Washington, D.C., let's see who gets to stay home and cut those programs first.

Here in Florida, the announcement that certain programs for disabled persons would experience a reduction in funds resulted in newspaper stories that maintained that such measures meant that group homes literally would wheel out their mentally disabled adult residents and tip them into the gutter. Government agencies could not possibly consider any alternative money-conserving behaviors available to its citizens. To wit: adjust the thermostat (are these group homes kept at 68 all winter and 78 all summer?); cut back on the groceries just a tad (a lot of people are overweight as it is); trim recreation budgets; and, by no means least, make bureaucrats, rather than direct-care personnel, more accountable for their time and contributions to the process. We may have to dissolve some mid- to high-level positions; that should cover the...