What is happening .................. is a travesty.

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/opinion/18thu1.html

<snip>

For nearly a year, everyone in Washington and in the financial markets worldwide has known about the need to raise the debt limit. Doing so basically requires a one-sentence-long piece of legislation. But debate on that bill was bound to draw attention - and rightly so - to the wildly expanding deficits created by the Bush administration's fiscal and economic policies. So, predictably, Congressional leaders delayed facing up to reality.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary John Snow has been forced to suspend the issuance of United States debt, to postpone indefinitely the announcement of the coming Treasury bill auction and to admit to Congress and the world that he is running out of legal ways to keep America afloat. In other words, with risk and uncertainty emanating from every corner of the global economy, the Congressional leaders' foot-dragging has made them look like fiscal buffoons, courting a loss of lenders' confidence in the government's ability to steward a deeply indebted nation. No one is worried about an American default. But Congress has been playing economic brinksmanship when leadership has been needed - and that's foolish.

That's not the worst of it. The new fiscal year began Oct. 1, but Congress has failed to pass the spending bills needed to pay for about 20 percent of the federal government - virtually everything except defense, homeland security, entitlements like Medicare and interest payments on the national debt. Neither the House nor the Senate was able to stay below the unrealistically low spending caps without resorting to gimmicks, ending up with competing out-of-whack bills that are some $8 billion apart. (The Senate wants more spending than the relatively more government-averse House.)

With no time or willingness to bridge their differences, and little appetite for confronting the mess they have created, the lawmakers now plan to lump all the spending into one huge bill: the dreaded omnibus. The great advantage for the faint of heart is that no one will actually see the actual bill before it's passed. The problem is that it will home in on the unrealistic spending targets with an indiscriminate, across-the-board reduction that ignores the real needs the government is supposed to be addressing. For instance, the Energy Department has predicted a 38 percent increase in the cost of home heating oil this winter, but heating assistance for low-income people will probably be cut to allow for an increase of only 5 percent.

[Telly Savalas]

1. Good God

I'm too lazy to google the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that our current debt/GDP ratio is quite a bit lower than it was in 1945. So we're not in a crisis situation now, and the folks drawing up the budget shouldn't be acting like it. However we need to start taking care of our shit or we soon will find ourselves in a crisis. (Or rather the GOP does, since they're running the show.) The Truman and Eisenhower Administrations had much higher tax rates than we do now, and this reined in the WWII debt. Despite these higher taxes, the 1950's enjoyed prosperity and a much higher rate of job growth than we have now. The key was that the taxes were fair and didn't try to load the tax burden on the lower and middle classes, thus cutting into their purchasing power.

The GOP needs to take some responsibility. We are not going to grow our way out of a $450 billion budget defecit. Taxes either need to be raised or spending must be cut. Since we know that the party of Hoover is unwilling to raise taxes, they need to come clean about where they intend to cut spending. Since we know damn well that they're not going to give up their Star Wars missile "defence" system or any other fancy miliary toys or any of their corporate welfare, it means they either intend to cut social programs or wreck the economy by sinking us further into debt. House and Senate Democrats need to be crawling up their ass about this. If the GOP consists of a bunch of regressive social Darwinists, we need to make them admit it.

[gratuitous]

2. Wow, comedy on the NYT editorial page

Don't y'all recognize tongue-in-cheek when you see it? Surely the concluding sentence should have been a dead giveaway:

"A backlash will eventually come, either from dissatisfied citizens who care about responsive government or from financial markets that care about fiscal sanity. Or both."

Ha ha! "Dissatisfied citizens who care about responsive government"! What a laugh! The Times doesn't give two shits about responsive government or the citizens dissatisfied with the government. As long as their six-figure salaries are coming in, they couldn't care less about deteriorating schools, crumbling bridges and roadways, millions in poverty or millions more without access to health care.

This editorial will, I give you a Nancy Grace guarantee, be the sum total of the Times' output in opposition to Republican budget policies and priorities.

[kentuck]

3. gratuitous, I think you should surmise this idea and send it to NYTimes...

In the same simple and blunt language....

[gratuitous]

4. File off the serial numbers and claim it as your own

Thanks for your kind words. Anything you see under my handle, if you think it's worthwhile, feel free to make whatever use you can of it.