Posted at 03:34 PM ET, 06/08/2011
Is a short-term default by the U.S. ‘stupid’?
“[Update, 7 a.m.: The Post reports that Fitch Ratings threatened on Wednesday to downgrade U.S. securities to junk bond status if scheduled payments are missed. An event it described as an “extremely unlikely event.” I hope that’s not just wishful thinking.]
“Before “Weinergate” took over part of the national conversation, we were engaged in a debate over the potential default of the United States for the first time in its history. There are those like me who are shouting from the rooftops that the legal limit must be raised on how much the nation can borrow to meet the obligations it has already incurred. There are those who are willing to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States. And then there are those such as presidential candidate and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who think ashort-term default wouldn’t be so bad…”
Cassi Creek:
For decades, the GOP has claimed to be the party identified with and demanding national fiscal responsibility. They’ve railed against Democrats engaging in “tax and spend” economics.
Now the GOP/teavangelist mob is willing to cause the U.S, to default on its obligations by refusing to raise the debt ceiling and then proceed with the budgeting process. Suddenly, fiscal responsibility has become unnecessary. It has been replaced in the GOP’s corporate mind with spending without any funding. Three wars, a huge windfall for pharmaceutical companies, and tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, all passed into being by the GOP’s minions without a ghost of funding, have gutted our economy. Immense favors and bailouts for bankers and financiers have added to the depth of the hole we are now in.
There is a failure to realize that our government needs revenue from taxation despite the teavangelist mantra “no new taxes.” Like the residents of Palingrad, the Teavangelist legislators are deeply committed to magical thinking. They have fallen prey to their own propaganda, and to that older Reagan trickle down myth.
This government cannot exist without tax revenues. This nation cannot exist without tax revenues. The former middle class and former working class can no longer support the cost of allowing the ultra-wealthy to dodge income and other taxation.
Anyone who looks at the years since Nixon’s presidency honestly can easily see that giving money to the rich (or lessening their taxes) will not result in more jobs and more income for the working and middle class. The wealthy do not share. What has trickled downward from both the Reagan and Bush tax cuts; and what will follow from the Obama extensions, is not colorless, odorless, or tasteless.
The GOP/teavangelist mob has deluded itself and bought the lies that a senile actor read from cue cards as he paid off his campaign debts by encouraging greed and corruption. They have convinced the working class to vote against their own best interests. The major players in the GOP have sufficient currency stashed off shore that they will never wonder where they will sleep or when they will be able to eat their next meal. But they’ve sold the rest of us out.
Make no mistake. While Obama was not aggressive enough in his attempts to defuse the financial bomb he was handed, I have little doubt that we’d be where we are today if they GOP/teavangelists had not allowed racism and stupidity to become their driving policies. The committee chairs in the House are quite willing to ignore the reality of the global economic system and the severe damage to the U.S. citizenry that will happen if we default on our obligations to other nations. We are not in a recession, we are in, and have been for several years, the Reagan-Bush Depression. All that it took to push us over the brink was stupidity from the GOP. All that it will take to keep us there is the even greater stupidity of the GOP/teavangelists.
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