Prepare to Bump Your Head on the Debt Ceiling

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said today:  “The tax issue is finished, over, completed.  That’s behind us.  Now the question is what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and our future, and that’s our spending addiction.”

Then for good measure McConnell threw in the Greece canard, which is very effective in scaring people, but is irrelevant to our situation.  Greece’s problem is not having its own floating currency and its own central bank.

I agree that we need to cut spending (How about getting out of Afghanistan ASAP?), but you cut spending by negotiating on stuff you haven’t bought yet.  You don’t demand spending cuts by refusing to pay for the things you’ve already bought.  And we need to balance spending cuts by reforming the tax code to get additional revenue.

If the GOP were so concerned about the national debt, they wouldn’t be willing to mess with our credit rating, driving up borrowing costs and throwing away money on interest payments.

 

Paul Ryan — You Lie!

From “Top 5 Fibs in Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech,” Brian Beutler, Talking Points Memo:

Medicare

Ryan forged his reputation in large part by drafting and advancing an unpopular plan to dramatically cut and privatize Medicare. Though he didn’t mention that plan once on Wednesday, he included it in his last two budgets, both of which preserved the Affordable Care Acts cuts to Medicare — taken mostly from overpayments to private insurers and hospitals.

Instead, Ryan once again dubiously accused President Obama of being the true threat to Medicare.

“You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it.”

Obama did use those Medicare savings — in the form of targeted cuts in payments to providers, not in benefits to seniors — to pay for the health care law. Ryan’s budget calls for using them to finance tax cuts for wealthy Americans, and deficit reduction. But by now calling to restore that spending commitment to Medicare, Ryan and Romney are pledging to hasten Medicare’s insolvency by many years.

U. S. Credit Rating

Standard & Poors downgraded the country’s sovereign debt rating in 2011 because congressional Republicans… threatened not to increase the country’s borrowing authority — risking a default on the debt — unless Democrats agreed to slash trillions of dollars from domestic social programs and investment.

Janesville GM Plant

Ryan criticized Obama for — yes — not using government funds to prop up an auto plant in his district.

Ignoring the inconsistency of a Republican chastising Obama for not bailing out more auto manufacturers, the plant in question closed before Obama’s inauguration in 2009.

Bowles-Simpson Debt Commission

Ryan chastised Obama: “He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.”

Ryan sat on that commission. He voted against it. Following his lead, so did the panel’s other House Republicans.

Protecting the Poor

Near the end of his speech, Ryan claimed the campaign’s top priority is protecting the poor. “We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone,” he said. “And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak.”

Just under two thirds of the dramatic spending cuts in Ryan’s budget target programs that benefit low-income people. That plan also calls for large tax cuts for high-income earners.

Emphasis added.

The Tea Party Traitors

I used to think the Tea Party brand was cute and quaint.  Now I think it’s Orwellian.  The original Tea Party helped create this country, the new Tea Party is helping to destroy it.  If these people are patriots, what do traitors look like?  Their irrational intransigence has cost us our credit rating.

Michelle Bachmann falsely claims that we lost our AAA rating because President Obama didn’t have a plan.  On the contrary, S & P made it clear that the downgrade came because of the Tea Party’s “take no prisoners” plan to encourage and welcome chaos.  In other words, we lost our AAA rating because of the Bachmann plan.  This was a downgrade born of insanity, not insolvency.

The Tea Party “spouts” only ignorance.  Michele Bachmann says that we made it through the Great Depression without a downgrade.  S & P had no rating to lower back then — they began rating countries in 1941.

The Tea Party is so determined to put one man, President Obama, out of a job that they really don’t care how many other Americans must become or stay unemployed to accomplish that.

I’m a conservative Republican, and I have no problem with driving a hard bargain.  Driving into a brick wall is where y’all lost me.