Reality Behind the Debt Crisis

I stopped writing about politics because it was driving me crazy. I decided to bury my head in the sand for a while. That is until I heard about the 39 riders on the the Boehner plan to raise the Debt Ceiling. The Bill was intended to a limited increase in the Debt Ceiling and we would have the whole fight again in a few months. The 39 riders were all about destroying regulation, environmental regulation. De-funding the EPA and gutting the Endangered Species Act are prime Republican targets. If the current class of Republicans and Tea Baggers had their way we would return to the pre-progressive Oligarchy when the wealthiest Americans owned everything, child labor laws did not exist, the environment was pillaged and plundered, factories were death traps, and the food was not fit for human consumption. Why would that be? Because regulation is really there to help the poorest and weakest of our society. The bottom 90% benefit the most from governmental protection. If we want a vision of the Republican Plan we need only to look at China with its lung searing pollution, toxic products and toys, unregulated building codes, and lack of personal liberty.

Yes the Republicans want to unfetter industry, the job creators, but they also want to tell you what you can do with your own body and tell you who you can love.

The Republicans always paint Democrats as tax and spend liberals but a quick search of the debt accumulated in my lifetime reveals the most fiscally prudent Presidents have been Johnson, Nixon and Clinton and the most fiscally reckless have been Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes. I left our Carter because he's somewhere in the middle and I left out Obama because were are only part way through his first term. George W. Bush raised the National Debt from 5.7 Trillion to 10.6 Trillion doubling it in 8 years. Under Bush Senior the Debt nearly doubled from 2.6 to 4.1 Trillion. Under Reagen the National Debt went from 900 Billion to 2.7 Trillion increasing by two thirds. Yes the debt has risen under all of the last 9 presidents but Clinton and Johnson were the best at keeping it under control.

If you want to believe the Republican lies and let the gut all environmental protection then go ahead... I'm looking to move to Canada.

Obama's Waterloo

Over the Summer, when Jim DeMint claimed that by blocking health care reform it would be Obama's Waterloo he was really saying that the Republicans would not support it only because it was Obama's agenda. Even if there were ideas the Republicans liked they would unite against it, use their media machine to squash it, and stomp all over the bloody remains of it.
Yesterday I heard two stories on NPR, the last Bastien of true journalism. One highlighted the fact that the current Health Care bill passed in both houses is not that dissimilar than the health bill the Republicans crafted to counter the Clinton bill in the '90s. And, I heard Lamar Alexander (R-TN) state to Robert Siegel that the Republicans favor a step by step approach and not the comprehensive approach favored by the Democrats

SIEGEL: But realistically, are we at a moment when if Republicans could see three of their six steps combined with three things that Democrats like and that you might not like that much, are we at a time when that actually can make sausage in the legislature? Or is this a time when nothing is going to happen?

Sen. ALEXANDER: Well, we could, but wouldn't it be better to say can't we find three things we all agree on? I would think allowing insurance to be sold across state lines to increase competition, reduce prices might be one of them. Usually, we agree on...

SIEGEL: But some people would say in that case, the risk you run is that the least regulatory state, the elusive state might put out insurance policies, might regulate them and there would be a race to the bottom and everybody would buy policies from state X where they don't do much in the way of regulating insurance.

Sen. ALEXANDER: Well, that's true, but that's a problem you would have to address in the legislation, but permitting more competition across state lines might be the better result. I think on any of these proposals, the difference between Democrats and Republicans isn't just left versus right. It's step-by-step versus comprehensive in our goals.

Siegel didn't let him off the hook he said the Republican energy plan calling for 100 nuclear plants, offshore drilling, and making half of the cars electric sounds like a huge program. Alexander said "Well, it's four steps, though. Each of those four steps is not a big surprise. It's these 2,700 page bills that are big surprise."

So a bill, just because it's 2700 pages, is a big surprise and the status quo is better? Sounds to me like they want to humble Obama even if it hurts Americans. They only want bills in simple 4 step process and will ignore the very ideas they promoted 17 years ago just because they are coming from the other side of the aisle.

Interesting

This story is from NPR morning edition.
I like the part about how

"House- and Senate-passed bills have far more in common with the bill put forward by Republicans in 1993 than with the competing plan pressed by then-President Clinton and congressional Democrats."

and

"...to claim that this bill is somehow a left-wing government takeover is rhetoric of a rather extreme sort, no question about it."

Very interesting...