Nice To Do's Have To Stop

Late last year and earlier this year we read many accounts of the financial institutions who had received TARP funding, then sending their employees off on what appeared to be unnecessary boondoggle trips. In particular, AIG got slaughtered in the public perception because of an incentive reward trip for their salespeople who exceeded plan. As we all know, perception is reality for many so these things must be managed. But, I do find it curious that from the President on down we point our fingers at what we perceive to be frivolous private sector spending while we spend the taxpayer’s money on all kinds of programs that don’t seem to make sense. When you work inside of a company and you aren’t going to meet your financial plan, you begin cutting costs quickly and you kill unnecessary spending and expenditures. The government doesn’t do this. Today I read about the problems with recent space launch. Since we have gone into this recession I have watched multiple space shuttle launches occur. Can someone please tell me why when we are hemorrhaging money and reaching a trillion dollar deficit that we are continuing to launch the space shuttle? Is it because these space missions are instrumental in solving our priority problems; the economy, education, energy and healthcare? The government needs to start being practical and making some practical decisions that any of us would make if we were running our own business or household finances. We have to be willing to have the courage and resolve to tell the kids that we can’t go to Space Mountain this year, because we just can’t afford it. C’mon Congress. C’mon Mr. President. Let’s be practical for once and put away the impracticalities of launching space missions when we don’t have the money to do so. It’s a nice to do, not a have to do and we can’t afford the nice to do’s….at least not right now.