Words to Live By Since 1993 A SPIFF Publication Vol. 3, No. 37 Remember us? Support Our Troops Anyway In their never-ending quest (never-beginning either, for that matter) for a foreign policy, President Clinton and Bill have determined that the best way to declare a policy and then stick to it is to send American troops to Bosnia. The time it takes for deployment alone will surpass their current record for foreign policy longevity. We were expecting some answers to many of our questions when Bill appeared on television Monday night. What we got (and we should have expected this, too) was more questions. The first question is, of course, "Why?" Why are 20,000 citizens of the United States of America going to central Europe, prepared to die or to kill? Is it to establish peace? Is it to establish democracy? We'd like to think so. Is it so the Clintons can gain political points? Believe it or not, we here at Spiff hope that's not the case. They have already shown that they'll lie, cheat, steal, lie, shred, move bodies, lie, inhale, and lie without conscience, but we refuse to believe that even someone with Bill's lack of character would send American boys to their deaths just to get reelected. How will know when we're finished? If we're going in to establish peace, what defines when peace has been established? Is it when nobody has killed anyone for three straight days? When Bosnia doesn't make the front page for three straight days? When we're bored? When it's time to pick up some electoral votes? (Despite the previous paragraph, we do believe that President Clinton would have Bill declare victory and time it so CNN shows our troops landing back on American soil, hugging their wives and kids, just in time for the 1996 elections.) As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, peace-keeping is an eternal vigil. Who will take over when we've decided to leave? Will it be the Russians' turn? Will the Bosnians be able to keep their own peace? If in one year their hearts will be so full of love for peace (if not for each other), then why not now? Will they really change that much in 12 months? Throughout Bill's speech and throughout the debate the past week, the Bosnian mission has been compared to President Bush's crowning achievement, the Gulf War. In the Gulf, we saw one country invade another. In Bosnia, we have at least three different groups of people, who have hated each other for centuries, attacking each other in a country that hasn't even existed for five years if it ever did exist. In the Gulf, we had a mission: get Iraq out of Kuwait. In Bosnia, we have a dream_ a laudable dream, but a dream: don't let anyone hurt anyone else. If we can't do that in our own country, do we really think we can do it over there? Will American occupation of Bosnia help at all? Maybe. Will peace, our objective in this whole thing, last after we're gone? Probably not. Should we be sending troops there? No. As Ronald Reagan, The President, showed us and we here at Spiff have repeated often: ù The United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest. ù If the decision is made to commit our forces abroad, it must be done with the clear intent and support needed to win. It should not be halfway or a tentative commitment, and there must be clearly defined and realistic objectives. ù Before we commit our troops to combat, there must be reasonable assurance that the cause we are fighting for and the actions we will take will have the support of the American People and Congress. ù Even after all these other tests are met, our troops should be committed to combat abroad only as a last resort, when no other choice is available. But now, it doesn't really matter whether we should go or not. The troops are going. The commander-in-chief of the United States is sending them in. Under our Constitution, he has the power to do so, just as President Bush had the power to send our troops to the Gulf. The Constitution hasn't changed since then. (Well, actually it has. The 27th Amendment has been ratified, but that has nothing to do with this.) We don't need the Republican Congress to decide if this is right or not, just as we didn't need the Democrat Congress to justify President Bush's actions. Let's get the budget balanced instead. And for those of you who have been thinking it's better to have President Clinton and Bill reelected than to have a less-than-ideal Republican, this incident shows why you're wrong. Make or Break You knew we couldn't sit this one out. The government shutdown has come and gone, while the battle of the budget rages in Washington. Our fondest dream came true--almost. A partial shutdown of the federal government is better than no shutdown at all. While it's true that American civilization--the most powerful in history--barely survived the inability to get a passport for a few days, it still had to be done. To the combatants on each side of this debate, we have two very different messages. To the libs, led by a suspiciously quiet President Clinton and an annoyingly noisy Bill, we say this: Shut up. Wasn't it you who said in 1992 that you would produce a balanced budget in four years? You said it but you never meant it. More lies to get elected. Maybe it was the five-year plan you proposed. Twelve? Ten? Seven? Nine? Or maybe the only budgets we should believe you were serious about was the one that raised our taxes or the one you produced in February which never balanced. So, we have decided to ignore you. To the Congressional Republicans, we have a very different message. You were given an opportunity in 1994. That opportunity, like all opportunities, comes with responsibility. The people demand a balanced budget. We demand a sound future. We asked you to go to Washington and end 40 years of the same old garbage. Now it is time to deliver. We are fond of using the term "revolution" to describe what happened in 1994 and since. You cannot have a revolution if you do not fight and win battles along the way. This is not about who gets what committee assignment or how big somebody's staff is. It is about the kind of nation we will have in the next century and beyond. Is money an issue? Sure. But more importantly, you have the opportunity to forever change how Americans look at their government. If you lose your job, for example, the federal government will not be mommy, daddy, and provider to another lost generation. Doing your job at this point means standing firm against the lib and the media (as if there's a difference) onslaught of blame. Fold and you forever forfeit the right to use the word "revolution." In the midst of this crisis, we here at Spiff stumbled across a very valuable item. Each department of the federal government was asked to calculate how many of its employees were deemed nonessential and sent home. It has long been our argument that they should not be there in the first place if they are nonessential. So this list gave us an idea. President Clinton and Bill don't like the current budget proposal, so we thought we would give it a shot. Following is an actual list of the cuts made by each cabinet department during the budget battle. This list also serves as the very first Spiff Fiscal Year 1996 Budget Proposal It is our proposal to permanently cut (and by cut, we mean cut) each agency by the percentage listed. Please note that, for the most part, the agencies that might actually serve a legitimate purpose take the smallest cuts while those that are stupid get hammered. Just for good measure, we have determined that any agency with over 90% of its employees sent home should be eliminated altogether. ù Commerce: 66.5% ù Defense: 33% ù Education: 89% (Oh, it's close enough. Let's kill it anyway.) ù Health and Human Servitude: 58% ù Housing and Urban Development: 99% (See what a good idea this is?) ù Interior: 72% ù Justice: 27% ù Labor: 75% ù State: 81% ù Transportation: 19% ù Treasury: 83% ù Veterans Affairs: 15% ù EPA: 96% (Yahoo!) ù General Services: 79% ù NASA: 93% ù Personnel Management: 47% ù Small Business Administration: 93% ù National Archives: 99% (If we cut the government, we cut the paperwork. If we cut the paperwork, there's less to archive.) ù White House Core Staff: 89% (Still not enough) ù White House Agencies: 82% Would you believe that all of this cuts the government by only 42%?!? But we feel it is a step in the right direction. If Bill won't go for the current plan, maybe we can talk him into this one. In the meantime, it is up to the Congressional Republicans to stay strong. Call your friendly neighborhood Republican officeholder and tell him to stick with it. Quote of the weak: "Drive home safely and remember: If you must drink and drive, try to do it when Phil Gramm is crossing the street." New Hampshire AFL-CIO newsletter Quote of the strong: "Get ready to hear stories of rape and mass murder in Bosnia. The stories will be told by our leaders before they send 25,000 of our young men into that country. Perhaps we should send the leaders in first." Paul Harvey Words to Live By is published every week at about this time by Spiff. You can send a fax to us here in the Spiff Executive Tower, on the banks of the mighty Cumberland River, at 615-847-2259, or you can send us e-mail at spiff@nashville.com.