Debt Crisis?

[Donnachaidh]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-hare/37690/debt-crisis-obama-plays-role-of-corporate-party-soldier

Even if President Obama caved in on the recent debt confrontation, and under a different theory he did not, the facts reveal that he capitulated long before the current so-called debt extension compromise, which was instead granting better than 90 percent of what was sought by that renowned institution of political moderation, the Tea Party.

I was one of those who wrote that Obama gave away the store long before this current crisis, which was arguably manufactured, came into being. The time to take a stand was earlier when John Boehner and his Republican Tea Partiers insisted that a budget agreement could not be reached unless the Bush tax cuts that were set to elapse were reinstated.

Senator Mitch McConnell and others proclaimed that not reinstating these cuts benefiting the rich would constitute a tax increase. A tax increase, they insisted, was something one should not levy during a recession without the situation worsening. Boehner was fond of warning then as he did during the recent debt squabble that ending these cuts would cost jobs.

The argument was fraudulent and the ones making it no doubt knew better, save for the Tea Party newcomers, at least some of whom appear naïve enough to swallow such absurdity. What is scarcely mentioned is that the Bush tax cuts were initially tacked on to a voluminous budget bill and there was no provision in it to pay for them. Hence, it was unfunded, floating in a red ink sea amid a mounting national debt. It marked more of the same trickle down, Republican Coolidge-Hoover era economics re-launched by Ronald Reagan, who would be later topped by George W. Bush as the debt massively increased.

More at the link --