by Bruno Korschek

Created on: August 23, 2010   Last Updated: August 24, 2010

As the first decade of this century comes to a close, I thought it would be a good idea to look back over the past twenty years to see how this generation's politicians have managed the affairs of the Federal government and the country. Twenty years is a good measure since it a reasonable amount of time (not too short to see emerging trends, not too long to be irrelevant), it covers a time period when the Democrats and Republicans each controlled the White House for ten years, it covers a time frame when both parties either controlled parts of Congress or had split control, and the actions taken by these politicians will impact the nation for years to come.

Given this back drop, how did our so-called leaders perform relative to the vital issues facing the country? Unfortunately, the final report card is not pretty:

• Social Security is hurtling towards insolvency with no rational plan in the works to fix it.

• Medicare is hurtling towards insolvency with no rational plan in the works to fix it.

• Our public education system fails to adequately education vast numbers of our children while consuming more and more resources.

• We still have no rational national energy plan, which has caused us to become more and more dependent on the whims and energy pricing of foreign countries.

• We have not figured out how to manage the issue of drug addiction that has led to the evolution of a violent narco state just south of our border and left many our citizens that want to kick their drug habit untreated

• Our borders are still not secure, resulting in over 10 million illegal aliens in the country with a high probability that some of the 10 million are bent on terrorism aims.

• We are fighting two wars that have drained our Treasury, resulting in over 34,000 Americans being killed or wounded, but has not destroyed the terrorism threat that it set out to do.

• We continue to deny basic rights to the American gay and lesbian community, whether it is the right to marry or the right and privilege to serve in our armed forces.

• While the political class has passed a massive health care reform law, this law is likely to fail while substantially adding to the national deficit.

• Speaking of national deficit, we now have an outrageous national debt of over $13 TRILLION, burdening every American household with over $100,000 worth of government debt.

• Government reaction

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