July 16, 2011 was the actual deadline for raising the debt limit for this country and an infamous day in history where we allowed lawmakers to drive this country off a cliff by not voting to pay our bills. The economic impact of not raising the debt ceiling scares me beyond anything in my life, and the fallout has already started with S&P dropping 69% this morning and the exchange down 100. This is not about government spending; this is about government paying their bills…the ones that we have incurred, not the ones we are creating or might create. It is not something that has just come up either; the debt ceiling has been raised many times over the years. In fact Ronald Reagan the conservative God of favor lately, pushed to raise it 17 times in his quest for getting out of the worst financial problems since the great depression with his 10.5% unemployment and near American default. He knew back then what anyone who has been paying attention knows now…we are not growing an economy by cutting investment and jobs.
“Think Progress.org” ran this quote recently: “Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinksmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar.” Sound familiar? Ronald Reagan, 1987
Imagine all the folks near or in retirement not be able to spend; that is exactly what will happen if they keep insisting on cutting Social Security and Medicare, and as I’ve said before those are NOT entitlements, they have been bought and paid for out of wages. That group of people is now the largest group of spenders in this country aside from the top 1% who still have oodles to spend thanks to legislation curbing taxes for them. There is no question that we have to revamp elder care especially Medicare and Medicaid, but that revamping needs to concentrate on streamlining it and closing the loopholes that allow the rampant fraud associated with it. That is what costs us money. We also need to address preventive medicine not just in the elderly but across the board. Not addressing health care problems when we had the chance was nothing short of stupid and it will turn to catastrophic soon especially as our financial situation worsens. In fact it has indeed contributed immensely to the problems we are having now.
We have been fooled beyond belief in this country when bettering our health care system, cutting debt associated with it and attempting to control banking that got us into this mess is propagandized as bad. The reality is, it is bad for the insurance companies quarterly profits and investment bankers bonuses. This President is giving the Republicans the moon when it comes to a debt ceiling deal according to many older former Republicans, but the current congress is not taking it even though the prospect of not will no doubt put this country and the world into a real and serious tailspin worse than nearly every American has ever seen. It is beyond me why we have to barter for this financial maneuver in the first place? It is to pay our bills like, you know, the two wars that congress agreed to get us into a few years back and the huge tax cuts that left this economy unsustainable. Funny, one of the few who voted against going into those wars was Obama.
Politicians on both sides of the fence change their stories all the time, but following the stories this last 4 + years have been hard to take, especially now. Cutting college funding is one of the “new” or “half-breed” Republican’s ideas for curbing spending, but giving the top 1% tax breaks is not? The rich have not paid their fair share in years thanks to tax loopholes so large you could drive a bus through them, yet we are giving them more than ever now. What is really stunning, on top of that is the middle class who indeed funds this country, is supporting legislation to give them and corporations huge tax breaks and at the same time are taking up the slack and bearing the burden! Middle class lives are hold as well yet we are buying into this nonsense that “Trickle down” is coming. Well, where is it? That is what I want to ask the pro-tax loophole folks in congress…where is that trickle down? Weren’t we supposed to see that by now? After all it has been 10 years since the Bush tax cuts began and the economy has flittered away since. Rather than ask Obama where the jobs are, how about asking the folks who supported those “trickle down” tax breaks where the jobs are?
It is bad enough that we are being misled by our politicians for their political gain but being misled by the in their pocket “news” sources is inexcusable. Putting future candidates on the media payroll like Bachman and Gingrich allows them to campaign for months before they launch their bids and it ought to be a huge breach of campaign rules in my thinking. Buying politicians is inexcusable in the first place whether it is news media or corporations, but the Supreme Court allows it and recently opened the door for unlimited money flow from corporations to candidates in a 1 vote Republican win. By the way, those corporations are also headed up by that top 1% who have all the tax cuts already…does anyone understand how much we are being taken for the fools? The middle class is being cut out of everything and if you look at tax cuts meant for the wealthy and pricey education only available to the wealthy you get the idea that it might just be by design.
Not supporting education is probably the most powerful maneuver there is when it comes to controlling any government. Without education, particularly in a democracy and particularly in economics and civics, politicians and rich corporations can easily pull the wool over our eyes and control this country the way they see fit. I certainly don’t mean to sound way out there, but when I hear politicians such as New Hampshire’s new Republican state House Speaker, William O’Brien stating that college students should not be allowed to vote because “they just vote their feelings” a big red flag goes up. Of course they vote their feelings, doesn’t everyone? The idea that we should cut education funding as a means of balancing state and federal budgets is ridiculous. That is like a household cutting the food budget instead of the entertainment allotment. We must as some are screaming stop the unnecessary spending, but we cannot sustain ourselves if we take the food away. Without getting back to the education the post great depression survivors supported, we will indeed be unexceptional as a country.
I am a centrist in just about anything and pro-American in everything, but when I am being told that this or that is bad and never hearing a different solution I have to conclude that I am being bamboozled. I hear today that amid all this very important debt ceiling deal, the House of Representatives are incredibly still talking about the damn light bulb law! I guess that goes along with their harangue about the health care bill being bad for us. I can see where privatization has gotten us with insurance that only 40% of Americans can afford and mostly only if it is attached to their jobs, but then again, I have my eyes open.
It is beyond me how easily we are fooled into believing that what is good for us is bad. Education, small business and industry made this country exceptional and it would again if we just invested in it. The middle class made this country great not the upper 1% of the income scale. Not the news conglomerates or the giant communications companies. Not Wal-Mart or the oil companies and the plastic industry that they spawned…hard individual work on Main Street made this country great. We are being fooled again into believing that investment in America is bad for us and if we don’t stop waiting for this congress to save us we will not be in need of it.
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