What Would Your Grandmother Say?

In many instances, the best lessons are passed down from generation to generation. That is especially true when talking about interacting with others. What would your grandmother say? I have invoked this question in meetings where we were trying to decide how to modify or improve our product. It is surprising how many grown men would, after the shock wore off, say the same thing.

Right now congress is wrestling with a major tax reform bill and they are rushing to get it done before the end of the year, without Democrat support, and in spite of the possibility of causing great harm to a majority of the citizens for which they work.  What would your grandmother say? Mine would say, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

There is probably not a person in the country who does not think the deficit should be reduced and step number one is to stop spending more than we take in. Right there is a point on which we can all agree. Right now, we are working with a skewed system. It is not balanced, and it appears that fairness is not even on the table.

This tax bill that has been designed to reward the largest donors to the republican party is enormously unpopular with the majority of the population. It has been rushed. It has not been adequately vetted and there are a large number of economists with impeccable reputations that say it will inflate the deficit and hurt the economy.

It is the desperate measure, thrown down by a desperate legislature that has completely lost the ability to work across the aisle. They no longer even pretend to try. They think they can’t accomplish anything unless they hold all the cards and they can accept no evidence that does not support their pre-conceived idea.

This bill should have been built by a committee of equal numbers of Democrats and republicans. It should have included input from economists, historians, and experts from a large range of business and financial institutions. It should take enough time to evaluate the information available and it should have as its aim, what is best for the country. The country is comprised of all of us, not some of us, not a few of us, not just the wealthy.

This bill needs to be tabled and begun again with a different end-goal. Kill it now before it destroys our economy, our healthcare system and the very democracy on which we depend.