Or, at least to this point, hasn’t been talked much at all and if so, in hushed tones – actually paying the $14.5 Trillion debt actually racked up, not to mention the piling onto it by Obama and the Democrats spending? Instead we’ve heard about:
- The tax revenue enhancement
- Closing loopholes
- Flattening the individual and corporate rates
- Restructuring the entitlements
- The deal is on, the deal is off, there’s a new deal
- Obama is a petulant President.
- And today, we know that Obama has been cut out of the dealing.
- And Obama is one very scared President, with the realization that he’s fast becoming a one term President
Especially if the best efforts of Pelosi, Reid, Geithner, and Obama can’t keep the GOP from a two tiered effort with a short term effort that will result in yet another vote right smack dab in the Presidential general election.
And yes, Pelosi is scratched out as she has become irrelevant. And yes, I scratched the GOP. Sure, it is Republicans Cantor, Boehner and McConnell that are driving the bus up front.
But they ain’t the engine – the TEA Party is. From a rag tag collection of fed up regular type folks that started off complaining that the Govt was going to pay their neighbor’s mortgage to staging rallies attracting <tens| hundreds |tens of thousands> of people to influencing municipal, county, and state level officials and elections.
And then on to getting Federal candidates elected to both the US House and the US Senate. The TEA Party was ALWAYS the force that could derail the Progressive train-wreck-to-happen right from the get/go, and the Progressives knew it at the start. They realized that as soon as there was no one single leadership, they were doomed – it was only a matter of time. And this past November, the TEA Party doomed a lot of the Progressive politicians (mostly Democrats but a fair number of Republicans as well)
And it is the US House that is in the driver’s seat and Obama knows it. And Obama knows that it is this populist uprising against his expansion of Government to full blown Socialist levels & a vast expansion of the welfare state. And this is the nexus of raising or not raising the debt ceiling:
Are we going to allow the foundational philosophy of a limited government evaporate?
Mark my words – unless the spending is racheted down NOW, at THIS point in time, there may no longer be an environment where we, rather than government, can determine our future (or our present). The spending has to stop – either…
…it will be by our politicians who will finally begin to realize we sent them to MAKE the hard decisions and not pass them down the line, or by the private market who will (as we see with Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy) enforce austerity upon us.
The TEA Partiers understand that you have to earn your reward to have a successful society and that having an over-active and intrusive government with its Nanny Staters and rent seekers means that obtaining success is more who you know than what you’ve done. And they have sent freshman politicians, either directly as TEA Party candidates or as a "side benefit", to DC to protect this ideal. Allowing the debt ceiling to rise will begin the process of ceiling limited government’s coffin.
And the Freshman politicians know that they are being watched. They also know that they were sent to:
- Stop the spending
- Move Govt back to its Constitutional bounds
- Stop the spending
- Read the Bills
- Stop the Spending
- Taxed Enough Already
- Stop the movement to Socialism
- Taxed Enough Already
- Stop the Spending
And yes, stop the spending and that we are Taxed Enough Already. Many of them are right in line with what Obama derisively called "ideology". Yo, and your 30% increase in the size of Govt isn’t ideologically driven? Pot…kettle. His fate and his legacy is now tied up in the debt ceiling – and as of Sunday, he’s out of the loop.
But the problem that has slid out of the talk is really the most important of all and NONE of the involved folks have said bupkis about it – who is gonna pay the $14 trillion back? All I have heard is a slowing of the deficit! A cut in expenses of $2 – 4 Trillion over some number of years. Dudes (and Dudettes!) – you’re freaking spending $1.6 trillion in debt per year! And this is what the TEA Party will be ticked over!
The GOP Leadership, while trying to hold strong, still have those flashback moments of bad habits (politics as usual). This is no time to quiver in your boots – Obama IS quivering in his with the all out message of no more votes before election time. It is also no time to quiver away from the biggest, baddest, and worst job of all – paying it back and paying it off. Most of us know that when doing the spending on the card or equity, life’s a beach and life is good – until the bills come in and its time to ante up. And life, all of a sudden, swings into neutral (or even reverse).
I watched Tim Geithner Sunday morning; the most horrific was him repeating half of Obama’s campaign mantra – the Hope that Congress would come to the fore and save his boss’s butt. His only concern was to raise the debt.
Sidebar: why is it the TEA Party’s fault anyways? We have long term politicians who have spent us to the edge of the chasm, have caused the damage, and now say that we have to raise the debt ceiling so that they can spend even more – and that avoids the problem? Nay, that only delays the problem / kicks it down the road – and politicians ALL seem to want to do that – except the TEA Party ones.
We can no longer continue under the Big Government enablers’ mantra of "well, if you don’t spend X amount of money now, it will cost much more in the future." Never is there a thought that saving taxpayer money is also an ideal to hold high.
The debt Voldemort? There’s a spell for it (but more from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey than Harry Potter): "SHUT IT DOWN!"
