I’m not proud of my senator, Mitch McConnell and his cadre of Senate republicans who are holding the nation hostage in order to ensure that the balancing of the budget is done on the backs of the poor and what’s left of the middle class.
For eight years he sat silently as the last republican president ran up deficit spending by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and fighting two wars on credit.
When Obama took office, he was left the biggest fiscal mess since the great depression. Now, in order to further what he sees as the most important republican cause, making Obama a one term president, Mitch is complicit in a scheme to take the nation to the brink of another financial ruin. The last time, it was to allow the bankers to escape the catastrophe they created in order to create obscene salaries for the already wealthy.
This time, its to ensure failure on the part of the President, even at the cost of our country’s financial recovery. In order to cut the deficit, a combination of revenue increases and cost reductions will certainly have to take place.
Good faith negotiations are not taking place when one side announces that one of the two components, revenue increases, will not be discussed, and therefore, the arbitrary goal must be reached only through cuts in spending.
The standard argument is that you can’t increase taxes during a recession, and that those with wealth will create more opportunity (jobs) when they are allowed to accumulate additional wealth. That theory, however, just doesn’t make sense. If it were true, then where were the jobs they’ve been creating since the Bush tax cuts of 2002 and 2004? We, as a nation, can’t keep throwing ever-increasing amounts of money at the wealthy and hope that we get some of it back. What again, is the definition of insanity?
For the last twenty years, the middle class of our nation has seen decreasing pay while the richest one percent now “earn” 20 percent of its wealth. And I think I've read that the top 20% earn 50% of the wealth. Not since the roaring ‘20s has income disparity been as great.
And the solution? According to Mitch the gap must be made up by further pain to the poor and middle class.
Twenty years ago, Republicans could control the majority by making believe that they were the bastions of christian values and beliefs. Since that method started failing, they have become champions of fiscal responsibility. They can create a virtual reality that is obviously false to anyone who pays attention, but, what the hell, if enough people fall for it, it might as well be true.
People like the Koch brothers throw money at groups who in turn fund tea party types who will provide the energy to get more ideologues elected, and the process repeats itself. People don't want to be smart. They want to be told what they want to hear, to be reinforced in their beliefs, no matter how crazy those beliefs are.
If Sarah Palin wants to believe that Paul Revere rode to warn the British that we were not about to give up our arms, and that he used bells and whistles to do it, well, she's entitled to her own set of facts. The rest of us should just get used to it.
I just wonder what's going to happen when the middle class is gone and there is no one left to buy the products of the wealthy and the corporations. But I'm sure the republicans have already got that figured out.
