As Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith points out, the GOP doesn't give a damn about the deficit or the debt ceiling This is all just political games. See Debt Ceiling Hypocrisy, Naked Capitalism (cross posted from Credit Writedowns) (July 7, 2011). here's an excerpt.
During the Bush administration, when a budget surplus tuned to deficit and debt piled up, Republican leaders in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling 5 times, increasing the limit nearly $4 trillion. We’re talking about Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl. Combined, they voted 19 times for a debt ceiling increase without complaint or conditions.
When the 2001 and 2003 and 2004 Bush tax cuts were passed, the GOP KNEW that the cuts would cause huge record setting deficits. When they were passed and the war costs for Bush's wars of choice raged on, the GOP KNEW that this would result in huge, unprecedented budget deficits.
Remember that the 2001 cuts alone--not needed and opposed by 65% of the American people--cost more than $1.3 trillion over the last ten years. That's 1.3 trillion that would have been in the US coffers to pay workers more unemployment compensation or to undertake drastically needed infrastructure projects, from bridges to high speed passenger trains to waterways to katrina repairs.
The GOP is a bunch of hypocrits folks. They don't care if they put the US in default for debt that was necessitated by their tax cutting, tax-dodger condoining, wealthy coddling tax and spend policies. They don't care if your grandmother can't afford the nursing home she needs or that poor mother of two can't afford the surgery for her son or that retired 70-year-old gets stuck with a lower pension (private equity bought out his firm and got rid of all the union workers) and lower Social Security (don't believe that it won't impact current retirees, folks--what goes around comes around and once Social Security is no longer a sacred cow, it will be butchered grotesquely and finally by the reagonomics privatization crowd).
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