This debt-ceiling crisis is one of the GOP's making and relates directly to the failed policies of militarization, deregulation, privatization, and tax cuts espoused by Ronald Reagan and his satraps. Even the Washington Post (a right-of-center mainstream paper with a reduced staff and a tendency to describe economics and policy in the 'received wisdom' of Washington circles, which means that it tends to reflect corporatist and elitist perspectives more than it reflects ordinary Americans' thinking) recognized the way the Reaganomics tax-cut train has gained speed as it moved out of the station (spurred, of course, by the Koch and Walton money and the power of a dozen propaganda tanks spewing out the dogma on a daily basis):
This singular focus has been several decades in the making. The Reagan Revolution was spurred by “supply side” animus, but Reagan himself presided over several tax increases. He escaped GOP opprobrium, but when George H.W. Bush signed a deficit deal with higher taxes, he was cast as a traitor. George W. Bush passed two big tax cuts, which nonpartisan budget experts now say were a major factor in today’s deficits. Five Questions on the Debt Ceiling, Wash. Post, July 16, 2011.
Even some of the GOP leaders are now realizing that starting a game of chicken over something as critical to the US economy as the debt was probably pretty stupid. See, e.g., Tennessee Republican Bob Corker's admission that 'maybe the debt ceiling was the wrong place to pick a fight." Id.
But the tea partiers are still adamant that the US should just stop spending and all will be fine. Eric Crawford is one of those who is so out of touch that he does not see the irony of the party that preaches 'responsibility' as the answer to driving down medical costs (e.g., apparently by having people who are being transported to an emergency room do a quick web search to see which hospitals are best at keeping costs down, and thus showing that they can buy bad medical care responsibly) being the party that suggests its just find to renege on all of your obligations except the ones that you 'want' to comply with. See this excerpt on Crawford's thinking (if you can call it that) about the debt ceiling.
Crawford, a freshman legislator, said that the president could cope with a full stop on U.S. borrowing by using incoming tax revenue to pay for the services he thinks are essential — soldiers, Medicare and Social Security, and interest on existing debt. That approach, outside experts have said, might mean the government wouldn’t be able to afford the FBI, veterans’ benefits or other federal services. That’s all right with Crawford. “That wouldn’t work for just a few days. That would work for a few years,” said Crawford. GOP Dissent Complicates Path to Resolving Debt-Ceiling Crisis, Washington Post, July 16, 2011.
Note that Crawford seems to think failure to pay health, pension and disability benefits for veterans would be 'all right'. Those benefits of course are already earned--through arduous service on the battlefields that left WWII vets with loss of limbs, hearing, functions; that left Vietnam vets with the emotional scars of post-traumatic stress syndrome; that left Iraqi and Afghanistan vets with all of the above as well as a terrible homeless problem that the VA is only scratching the surface of addressing as is.
The way to decide what programs to fund is to debate those programs and make appropriations decisions and then either raise tax revenues to match the spending plans approved or borrow to make up the difference. Oh, wait. That's what Congress did when it made the commitments that led to the need to increase borrowing. So now these unpatriotic government-hating, economy-destroying idiots (sorry, folks, there's just no other word for them) want to renege on the decisions Congress has made by just not raising the debt ceiling, simply because this anachronistic mechanism happens to be there available for them to use as a tool in their economic terrorism fanny pack. This isn't the way to make appropriations decisions or tax policy folks. It's the way to destroy the economy.
The only solution is to boot the gang out of Congress before they bring the whole nation down. Trouble is, we don't have an opportunity to do that before they cause economic mayhem if they don't approve the debt-ceiling increase. Better get on the phone, write letters, send emails, folks. Someone has to wake these dolts up to the real world of obligations to make payment on obligations.
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