I would sit at the table long after everyone had retired to the living room, pushing the now-cold food around my plate, feeling hurt and resentful that they didn't understand that I couldn't eat certain foods. It triggered a gag reflex, and I literally couldn't swallow them. Stuffing was one of the main culprits. Brussels sprouts were the worst. Just couldn't do it.
So it apparently is with our lawmakers when it comes to working on this year's budget. Politically they can't swallow the food on their plate, so they push it around some more, making it seem as if they are eating something, when in fact they are not.
Oh, they will tell you that they are diligently working on those three bites, pointing to the empty spot where the sprouts used to be, when they had actually hidden them under the mashed potatoes, or fed them to the dog, or spit them out in a napkin, which they then threw away.
Those were my tricks. The difference between the lawmakers and myself?
I didn't campaign for the job of eating the food. I didn't run around telling everyone that I would eat those nasty Brussels sprouts for them, if only they would send me to that big table in Lansing. And I certainly wasn't being paid $90 g's a year with benefits, although sometimes the promise of dessert was dangled as an incentive.
The major difference was that I was seven years old, and the lawmakers are supposedly grown adults. But yet they are behaving like children who don't want to eat the Brussels sprouts when it comes to working on this year's budget. They will do anything to avoid it.
My relatives were wise to my tricks. The people of Michigan need to become wise to the tricks of the legislators before they set the table on fire in a last ditch attempt to avoid eating that yucky food.
The press is catching on, follow over the flip to see...
Today, Peter Luke pointed out that technically we have 34, count 'em, 34 days until the budget is due, but when lawmakers actually show up to do their jobs, which will be rare in August, they are busy pushing the sprouts under the mashed potatoes.
Using the budgets passed by the House, this week's promise from Granholm to universities to raise their state aid if they keep tuition down, and the refusal of Senate Republicans to look at prison reform, Peter shows us a quite a big pile of mashed potatoes, indeed.
With a budget deficit already estimated as high as $1.8 billion, the average person might wonder why just about everyone in Lansing is effectively proposing policies that would make that deficit even larger. And then at the same time ignore the question of how the votes will be cobbled together to pay for any of it.
Residents of this state are told they can have more money for education, safe streets and better roads when of course they'll get nothing of the sort until somebody's taxes are raised to pay for it.
The chasm that exists right now is between the state that Michigan residents presumably want and the one it will likely remain unless a consensus on revenues is reached soon. There is a rough consensus among politicians on the amount of money needed. Given the scary magnitude of that figure, they don't have a clue about how to collect it.
The consequences of my refusal to eat certain food have led to a slight iron deficiency in adulthood. I get dark circles under my eyes, suffer from a bit of fatigue, probably a few other things going on that I am unaware of. Not a big deal, right now. I take vitamins. Eventually though, it will probably catch up to me, and I will pay in the form of some very expensive medical condition.
The consequences of Lansing not eating the food on their plate have the potential to harm millions right now, this very year. College students have already felt it.
Ron Dzwonkowski of the Free Press wonders why Lansing doesn't seem to care. Ron shows us a big 'ol pile of mashed potatoes, too.
Do I make it seem like the state is falling apart? That's because it is. And your legislators are squabbling over whether the Secretary of State can close certain branch offices and which Web sites ought to be blocked from state computers. Then a House committee last week passed a budget bill that calls for spending $30 million more than Gov. Jennifer Granholm proposed for libraries, museums and the Detroit Zoo. What world do these people live in.
The Freep editorial points to a poll that shows that Detroit residents don't want to eat the Brussels sprouts, either.
Well, of course not. Who would volunteer for such a thing when they haven't felt the consequences yet?
I will throw in a c) The state's breakdown has not yet had a direct effect on the kind of people who will stay on the phone for pollsters. They were not the people lying shot for 30 minutes on a street in Royal Oak Township waiting for help from the State Police, an agency with 350 fewer troopers these days due to budget cuts. They are not on Medicaid, don't have a relative in prison because of a drug problem, and are either well past college or not interested in going. In other words, for whatever reasons, they don't personally feel what's happening to this place they call home.
And why should they? Nobody in Lansing seems to feel it either.
No, they don't feel it. Not yet. They will.
And the legislators will do just about anything to avoid feeling it, because it's obvious that saving their own skin comes before the needs of the people they serve.
Tim Skubick brings us a rumor that is floating around the Capitol.
And indeed there is talk of deliberately postponing a new state budget and a tax vote until late November. Instead, lawmakers could pass a continuation budget this fall, which continues state spending at this year's levels. It avoids the shutdown of government and eliminates a February date for a recall.
Similar maneuvering could also make it difficult for recallers to qualify for a May election.
But would lawmakers go to such lengths to avoid recalls?
"I think it's been factored into their decision ... That's what Democrats have explained to me," confirms the House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche, R-Novi.
Craig is one of the ones pushing the food around the plate, so I take what he says with a grain of salt. He is spitting his food in the napkin, too. Don't let him fool you.
Like my grandma long ago, the Governor can make them all sit at the table, but she can't make them swallow. She can only go about the business of cleaning up the rest of the mess in the house.
My grandma's silence disturbed me greatly, but I doubt that the lawmakers care what Granholm thinks about them. You know the only strategy the Republicans have is to defy every single thing that she does; the people of Michigan don't factor into their equation. The Democrats, along with the MDP, seem content to take the gifts that she has offered, that of their very careers, and repay her, and the people that elected them, with their sullen behavior that serves only themselves. Shame on all of them.
The food is going to go rancid on Lansing's plate before they eat their three bites. And you are going to be the one to pay in the end with some very expensive consequences.
Usually, I would end up giving in, and swallow those three bites, no matter how hard it was. Even as a child, I knew what had to be done.
Let's hope that Lansing figures it out, too.