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I have a hero. I don’t know his name. I never met him. But I think of him now and then, actually a lot lately. So is he a great sports celebrity, a military figure, perhaps a teacher or a fireman? Well, the man I am thinking about doesn’t fall into any of these categories. In truth, I don’t even know what he does, or did, for a living.

Back about 15 years ago, I attended a property owners association meeting in Washington County – hardly the location where heroes are minted. As the mundane details of environment, taxes, garbage pickup and other matters droned on, the chairman explained, almost as an aside, that they still had to fill out a long form and get it to Madison by a certain deadline. This form made our area eligible for some sort of special offer that would send a hefty chunk of cash to us.

This is hardly exciting stuff – not like watching the Packers in overtime. But at that point, an elderly man in the back of the room raised his hand and asked why we were asking for this money. The chairman seemed taken aback by the question and his only response was because it was being offered. The man in the back of the room didn’t seem satisfied with the answer and asked the question again. “I understand it’s being offered, but why are we asking for it … do we need it?”

Now the chairman seemed to be getting a little annoyed and gave the next best reason he could come up with. “Well, why should Kenosha or Appleton get it and not us?” The chairman responded.

Well, you can bet that didn’t satisfy the man in the back of the room. “At what point,” he asked, “does Madison run out of money simply because everyone who may be entitled to it, but doesn’t need it, asks for it. And isn’t Madison us? The money just doesn’t fall out of trees.”

That seemed to end the discussion. The exasperated chairman didn’t have a response to that one and moved on to the next bit of business. But I’ve thought of that older man a lot over the years and I’ve always appreciated the point he was trying to make.

I thought about him last year when I was part of a group discussion on the Obama healthcare bill as it was about to come up for a final vote in Congress. When I agreed that we needed an overhaul of the healthcare system, I said I was still concerned that nobody had actually read the entire bill and nor did we fully understood its ramifications. At that point, one member of the group asked, “So we can pay for two unwanted wars that are costing billions of dollars and not health care?”

I thought his point was as irrelevant as the chairman’s answer that we should grab the money before Kenosha.

“Is that the best reason you can come up with to pass the (healthcare) bill?” I asked. “Because if it is, I think you’ve just proven my concern.”

Today, when various counties and districts have serious monetary concerns and state and federal governments have to make some tough choices, the era of money grabs should end. Actually, if it hadn’t ever begun, maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess we find ourselves today. With the State of Wisconsin facing a budget deficit of something like $3.3 billion dollars, maybe all of us ought to realize that the era of hit-the-other-guy-but-not-me is dead and should be buried.

It’s equally true for every congressman who talks about cutting waste – except when it is coming to his or her district. I’d love to hear just one congressman campaign on the platform that he thought it was more important to balance the federal budget and that’s why he wasn’t bringing home billions of federal dollars this term. He’d sure get my vote.

Over the past 40 years, no one seemed to be listening to the old guy in the back of the room. We seem to have forgotten our grandparent’s simple lessons of life, like “don’t spend more than you earn” or “don’t take it if you don’t need it.”

I regret that I never went up to that man after the meeting and thanked him for his comment and his doggedness. I wanted him to know that he wasn’t alone in his views. And if he’s still around today, I’d think he might be optimistic with the choices the people of Wisconsin made last November. Now I just hope everyone in government – from the governor, the legislature, congress and the president – is listening.

-February 8, 2011