http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-dangerous-debt-game/2011/07/14/gIQAB4gyEI_story.html
The GOP’s dangerous debt game
“Eric, don’t call my bluff.”
“Those words suggest President Obama has had it up to here with the preening and posturing of Republican “negotiators” who won’t negotiate. Who could blame him?”
“Let’s review why the little game Republicans are playing is so dangerous. If the debt ceiling is not raised by Aug. 2, the United States government faces default. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a man not given to hyperbole, said Wednesday that the result would be a “huge financial calamity” — and the wound, he noted, would be entirely self-inflicted.
“Fairly soon after that date,” Bernanke said, “there would have to be significant cuts in Social Security, Medicare, military pay or some combination of those in order to avoid borrowing more money.”
“Contrary to popular impression, going into default would not be just a matter of stiffing the autocrats in Beijing.
“Less than a third of the $14.3 trillion national debt is owed to foreigners — roughly 10 percent of the total to China. The biggest chunk, about 40 percent, is owed to U.S. individuals and institutions. Another 25 percent or so is owed to the Social Security trust fund, the U.S. Civil Service Retirement Fund and the U.S. Military Retirement Fund. In a sense, we would primarily be stiffing American retirees, including veterans…”
“Obama will continue to offer Republicans sensible ways to refrain from committing a shockingly unpatriotic act of economic vandalism. The unfortunate fact is that if they blow themselves up, they take the rest of us with them.”
This is, in the end, what concerns the GOP most:
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the failure to reach a deal, forcing the government to default on its financial obligations, could have devastating consequences for the party. He recalled the federal government shutdown under former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich that helped then-President Clinton, a Democrat, win a second term.
“The reason default is no better an idea today than when Newt Gingrich tried it in 1995 is that it destroys your brand,’’ McConnell said in a radio interview on Wednesday. “It would give the president an opportunity to blame Republicans for a bad economy…’’
Cassi Creek: While wedded to tax breaks, tax cuts, subsidies and loopholes for their wealthy backers and special interest corporations, the GOP is worried that their voter base may somehow begin to see the truth about whom they are working for. It sure isn’t the common citizen, Frankly, The GOP “brand” is already degraded far beyond their ability to sell it to anyone who can read and understand that they are being offered propaganda that would have pleased Herr Goebbels. Unfortunately, as in the space race, it has come down to which set of liars lies best.
Today’s political news is full of such items. The cost of Sarah Palin’s “family vacation” bus trip included over $14,000 for the graphics package that featured pseudo-patriotism in advertising to garner more gold from the gullible to allow her family to flout and twist campaign finance laws. Most “average families,” such as she claims hers to be, don’t have PACs to pay for their park admissions, parking fees, lodging, meals, and travel in a bus that is obviously a campaign billboard. And they sure don’t get special tours or get brought to the front of the line.
Palin is also in the news today demonstrating an abject failure to understand the current debt-ceiling problem. That lack of comprehension, however, never seems to prevent her lying about it to her fan club.
I have to admit that I was not fully aware how much of our debt is actually owed to China. Don’t expect the GOP/teavangelists to provide accurate information to you. The Bush Administration was unable to privatize Social Security and Medicare. So they gutted the trust fund to fund two undeclared and un-necessary foreign wars. They will hammer and yammer about being owned by China in well-crafted political ads designed to make us believe that their lies are facts. In the eyes and ears of Fox News viewers, talk radio addicts, and others who accept the sound-bytes flung about to deceive the easily swayed, the desire to actually seek and find the truth in advertising is essentially non-existent. The GOP feeds the machine that feeds the party loyalists and fools the teavangelist fellow travelers, fools, and tools. It doesn’t take very much effort to learn the facts that the GOP wants hidden in a fog. It merely takes an interest, a willingness to read rather than watch, and the intent to search out the truth.
We’re not owned by China. However, the GOP will happily sell China our gold, our national parks, our oil and natural gas, and restricted technology. It isn’t the communists in China or the Islamic extremists in terror cells we should fear most, it is the greed-driven free-marketers who place profit and brand above nation. History has shown us this many times, and history is about to record yet another instance of a nation destroyed by greed.
Shabbat Shalom.
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