True Promises?

Tonight at the dinner table, the topic of discussion was appropriately the election, seeing how America voted for a new president today. I was asking who my parents voted for and why they chose that candidate, which led to the topic of candidates positions on certain issues. After talking about Obama’s and McCain’s position on certain issues, I asked my parents how realistic they thought these plans were. My dad made a very interesting point about how he thinks that many of the tax and economic plans will get “watered down” because of the checks and balances that take place in our government. He thought that any plan would be leveled out because of the fairly even split in Congress. I thought it was interesting how closely related this comment was to what we have been discussing in class the past week. Last week we went over the Constitution of the United States, and discussed the checks and balances in the United States. For a bill to pass, it must receive 2/3 the vote in both houses. If a bill favors one party’s ideas more than another, it would be hard for the bill to get passed. This is why the bills would have to get “watered down” in order to be put in effect. Both my parents thought that their economic and tax plans were very idealistic because the bill they proposed would be modified and redrafted in order to get passed through congress. The chance that the final bill will be similar to what they propose is very slim. Overall, I thought it was interesting how much my dinner conversation related to what we’ve been discussing in class.