Following the release of a stunning poll showing “two-thirds of the public say an agreement to raise the debt limit should include tax hikes for wealthy Americans and corporations, not just spending cuts,” top economy hostage-keeper and Congresswoman Diane Black tries her hand at damage control. Quoting the Credit Rating Bureau Standard & Poors, she tsk-tsks the negotiations over the debt ceiling:
“Look no further than this week’s announcements by Standard & Poor and Moody’s credit agencies. In the July 13th statement from Moody’s, they announced that the organization “has placed the AAA bondrating of the government of the United States on review for possible downgrade given the rising possibilitythat the statutory debt limit will not be raised on a timely basis, leading to a default on US Treasurydebt obligations.”
Indeed, what the Obama Administration has been warning us of for months is true. The US is at serious risk of losing it’s AAA credit rating if it doesn’t forge a balanced solution to the deficit. Given the citizenry’s mood and growing demands for fair revenue increases, has she decided to do the rational thing and raise revenues by closing tax loop-holes and putting a end to billionaire tax dodgers? Don’t for a minute imagine that. What, give up the hostage by improving our Nation’s fiscal health & security? Never! You see, the GOP still believes that we must… wait for it… stop spending. Period. Oh the nightmare of… spending!
Never mind that the debt ceiling must be raised not to accomodate new spending, but to pay the bills they’ve already run up in the previous decade. I guess it’s like when you buy your billionaire friends extravagant Christmas presents using Great-Aunt Betty’s credit cards: “…and here’s a big contract for you Halliburton, and a big tax dodge for you Exxon-Mobil, and we wouldn’t forget the Koch boys: here’s a big stocking of risky mortgage lending deregulation. Have fun!” Then, instead of paying the balances, just shred the bills when they arrive in the mail box . “Aw, too bad Aunt Betty, your credit rating is ruined! But here’s a can of cat food. Oh, were you going to pay for prenatal appointments for your daughter’s first pregnancy? Oops. And that retraining program for your out-of-work son? Not gonna happen. Buh-bye, I’ve got some stocks & bonds to count!”
Diane’s Black and her partners have the answer to it all:
“In order to restore certainty in our economy to bolster job growth and keep America competitive, we need to stop spending money we don’t have.”
Really? With a plan called “Cut Cap and Balance” that breathes not a word about raising revenues, Black and the GOP truly believe that Americans are stupid enough to agree with this Cut Down America Plan? We’ll see our communities gutted, our homes foreclosed on, and our personal incomes eclipsed by inflation (if we haven’t already been laid off) and still line up behind the GOP to blame Obama and vote for Michelle BachMittPerry?
In fact, spending money they don’t have is exactly what the GOP is best at, except they only spend it on their billionaire bosses and cronies. Remember the rationale behind the “temporary” Bush tax cuts? There was a surplus that year! Yay! Money! We were rolling in it! The fact that it was a Democratic administration’s surplus that should have been locked-down for future Social Security solvency didn’t stop the burning hole in their GOP pocket. What better way to transfer those assets to the upper crust than to “cut” taxes. Now they want the cuts to rain down on the working and middle class. For the surplus is spent but the greed never leaves them, their appetite must be fed.
No, the Congresswoman has decidedly NOT come to her senses. Clearly that the word “balance” is beyond her reckoning. She closes:
“All politics aside, I am committed to getting our country’s fiscal house in order. This burden of debt will be with us long after the debate over raising the debt limit is decided, and I am in this fight for the long haul. Securing our country’s fiscal future remains a top priority of mine, one that will last well past August 2nd.”
Is she lying, or does she believe that the condition of her stock portfolio & her fellow millionaires tax write-offs is the measure of our great Nation’s fiscal future? I would not doubt that her vision is so narrow and her ideology so rigid that she believes that if she is doing well, the rest of us must be just fine. What, Aunt Betty’s eating cat food? Who could have predicted? I am here to report that millions of Americans, no less the hundreds of thousands of her constituents here in the 6th district, will be soon telling her she is mistaken.