Saturday, July 16, 2011

Budget Crisis

Let’s see… George W. Bush was the only president in history to start a war, two wars in fact, while lowering taxes. The tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest have reduced the government’s income by some $2.5 Trillion. The wars have spent another $3 Trillion and an estimated $1.5 Trillion will be needed for assorted hardware replacement, care of our veterans and the training of replacements for those who will leave the armed services as soon as they are allowed to do so. Congressman Boehner had no qualms about adding that $7 Trillion to the national debt.

Were Boehner even marginally honest with the public, he would admit that were it not for his leadership in pushing through the tax cuts for the rich, and were it not for all the congress’ (including Hillary Clinton) lazy-minded rubber stamp of Dubya’s wars, the current debt would be only $6.8 Trillion, well below the ceiling of $14.3 Trillion.

On the other hand, had first Dubya then Obama not handed out  $600 Billion to the worthless sods at AIG, plus another $200 Billion to GM, that would have helped a bit as well. You may well remember my rant about the foolishness of bailing out the Wall St. Banks as a way to provide liquidity to the system. Liquidity was needed, and confidence that bank to bank transactions would be honored was non-existent. That needed to be done. But the supposedly socialist Swedes got it right: take over the insolvent bank (and AIG), fire the executives and promise them prison cells if they try to cash in their golden parachutes, sell off what works, fix what’s broken then resell it at a profit. If Sweden can do it, why not the US? The answer is that both G.W. Bush and B. Obama have Treasury Departments that are run by either former chairmen of Goldman Sachs or close friends of Wall Street Bankers.

So now Boehner wants to balance the budget by destroying social security and medicare. Helluva Plan, Johnny. And Obama appears to be willing to help him do it. Damn you, Barack; may you be un-elected in 2012.

Who are the damn fools in Ohio that keep reelecting this force of anti-American, pro-corporate socialist? [A corporate socialist taxes the middle class and the poor to support corporations, especially corporations that are large and pay their executives huge salaries.]