Political party’s agendas are dictated by the parties governing ideology. With Democrats, this ideology is one of liberal nature. Along with Republicans it is one of conservative nature. In the recent 2011 political embarrassment, the United States government almost defaulted on their loans. The most powerful economic force in the world almost could not pay their bills. As a result S&P, one of the nation’s three big credit rating agencies, downgraded the countries credit rating from AAA to AA+. The fingers began to be pointed; while some directed at Mr. Obama, others were at the Republican Party’s Tea party group. Liberals blamed conservatives, and intern conservatives blamed liberals. However, the question remained: How to get our country out of debt?
At this point you are undoubtedly forming an opinion on who is at fault. Human nature dictates that we place the blame on another entity. The problem does not lie in the massive debt of our country, but rather the massive political issues of our country.
The structure of our states politics is ill-fit to deal with the contemporary political concerns. Our system has 2 prevailing political parties. On the left side of the isle we have the democrats, who are often characterized as reformist and tree huggers. On the right we have republicans, who have the stereotype of gun-owning corporation lovers. These two parties are vastly different.
Imagine a household with a brother and sister, both extremely different. The mother, the president, ask the brother and sister compromise over a issue, lets say how to share the cookies. As you can imagine conflict will arise. This is the issue in Washington. Two groups, who hold steadfast to their beliefs, are placed into a room and expect to make a decision that will impact over 300,000,000 people. This doesn’t sound like the optimal scenario. Thus you have massive figure-pointing and little to no profound legislation being passed.
The reality is the system we have in place cannot house people on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. It requires centrist to be truly successful. Extremist generate stereotypes and impede the ability of voters to make an informed decision come election season. Extremist politics are successful during the campaign season but not during the legislative process. Extremist only reiterate their individual ideas and refuse to consider the other side as viable.
The Tea party was an exemplification of this during the 2011 debt ceiling debates. They held steadfast to their views and compromised the country’s future economic stability. Believing in your ideology is not the issue; it is the matter of hailing your viewpoint as the only viable option and refusing notions of compromise.
As for the 2011 government debt crisis, the damage is done. No use crying over spilled milk, or money. The only answer to curing our country of this political peril is to immediately generate an effective balanced budget that is based on fact, not ideology. Political agendas should not be dictated by ideologies, but rather the people.