Sunday, December 30, 2012

Lindsey Graham predicts the future

Which looks pretty much like a repeat of 2011. Apparently, (as Charlie calls him) Huckleberry Closetcase is more than willing to destroy the American economy unless the Senate agrees to starve granny. As he said in an interview:
I’m not going to raise the debt ceiling unless we get serious about keeping the country from becoming Greece, saving Social Security and Medicare [sic]. So here’s what i would like: meaningful entitlement reform — not to turn Social Security into private accounts, not to take a voucher approach to Medicare — but, adjust the age for Social Security, CPI changes and means testing and look beyond the ten-year window. I cannot in good conscience raise the debt ceiling without addressing the long term debt problems of this country and I will not.
Dr. Krugman explains how stupid Lindsey is:
The key thing to remember — and what the GOP hopes you won’t understand — is that raising the debt ceiling only empowers the president to spend money that he’s authorized to spend by Congressional legislation; nothing more. Conversely, a party that refuses to raise the debt limit is saying that it’s prepared to inflict vast damage on America in order to achieve things that it couldn’t achieve through actual legislation — in effect, that it’s prepared to use vandalism to subvert the constitutional process.
Also, as Think Progress noted in the first link, "Without raising the debt ceiling, the United States will be forced to embrace austerity so severe it will lead to 'a bigger GDP drop than that experienced during the Great Recession of 2008.'”

In other words, there's no surer way to "turn us into Greece" than to cave to Huckleberry's hostage demands. Which I assume is also the official GOP position. Which raises the eternal question, what kind of idiot making less than $500K annual votes for these soulless, self-interested cretins? [photo via]

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2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

The real problem is that Obama has sent mixed messages. In early December he said that he would not stand for this behavior. At the business round table he said he would not negotiate with the Republicans about this. And then, he negotiated with Boehner about it.

The whole thing: Obama's Debt Ceiling Bluff Revealed

At this point, I think we need to go with the constitutional option. Unfortunately, Obama has said he won't. Very troubling.

9:51:00 AM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

I'm rather disgusted with POTUS and the Dems today. The twitter currently describing a less than horrible deal but does nothing to diminish hostage taking as a tactic. Which was supposed to be the point of pushing it to the last minute.

Now they'll make a 11th hour backroom deal with no public input, IOW, business as usual and public will lose even more faith in govt as an institution capable of doing good.

1:25:00 PM  

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