Dear Editor: Today marks a great day for America. Nancy Pelosi is no longer the speaker of the house and John Boehner is now the voice of Washington. As a conservative Democrat you may be asking why I am excited about the shift in Congress. Well, I’ll tell you why; we do not need to have a sole government leading the way. We need to have a good mix of party leaders who think differently but most certainly have one thing in mind — stop spending! Manage the American profit and loss as if it were your own household income and expense layout. Be very cognizant of all purchases, act as if you are collecting unemployment or you have been notified that your position will be eliminated in the next few months. This also goes for the state and county/local levels as well. As a nation we have been programmed to spend to solve problems, instead of being polished and focused thinkers or trying to discover more innovative ways not to spend money and to cut back on all the frivolous and stocking stuffing items that we can live without.

With all that being said, I hope that our Rockdale County leaders will also adhere to this value added sentiment and try not to continue to have overruns with our budget and do a better job understanding accounting/finance and big picture forecasting by analyzing and performing the necessary due diligence on our tax digest. Then we need to continue thinking of ingenious ways to affect our revenue line incrementally to have our P&L in solid form for the new wave of perhaps another economic downturn in 2011.

Forecasting, forecasting and more forecasting is what we need to do in 2011 and ultimately our budget process will improve; because right now it is ineffective, inaccurate and the evaluation of the community is an overwhelming state of confusion. There is an old proverb that states the following: "To save is moral; to spend foolishly is immoral"

Many blessings for 2011 and may God bless America.