"The Deal": Unmitigated Disaster, Mixed With Betrayal and Ignorance

The "deal" worked out to raise the debt limit by a record amount is an unmitigated disaster for America. We had the big-spenders over a barrel, but let them get away. Tragically, all the Republican Congressmen had to do to save America was keep their word to the people who elected them. Only 22 had the grit and wisdom to vote against the Boehner plan which was the beginning of the end for fiscal responsibility. This deal is worse.

The debt will be raised by a record $2.4 Trillion dollars between now and the next election. The total "cuts" between now and then? There are no "cuts", just a deceleration on the increase in spending. Today Rush Limbaugh said that the way the CBO scores budgets there is a built-in increase every year. He noted that spending the exact same amount as we spent last year for the next ten years would be called a $9.5 trillion "cut" in CBO Washington-Speak. This plan, with it's $2.4 trillion in "cuts", would actually put us $7 trillion dollars more in debt than simply holding spending the same (the same spending level which currently gives us a 1.4 trillion dollar annual deficit). There are no cuts. The rate of growth in spending is very slightly restrained.

How slightly? $63 billion less growth than originally planned for the next two years. That is, for every dollar of decelerated spending (not cuts) we are going to borrow over $38 new dollars of debt. 38 to 1!

Almost all of the "cuts" they speak of, which they claim will "save" $2.4 trillion, are "back-loaded." That is, they occur years down the road and therefore mean nothing. No Congress can commit a future Congress to a given course of action. The only cuts that matter are those made in the next year or two, and not only were no cuts made, but the deceleration of spending was a trivial amount compared to the amount of new debt this deal will load on our backs.

In addition, the Bush Tax cuts will be up for renewal just as we will bump up against the new debt ceiling two years hence. It gives the destroyers (because debt is slavery) a perfect escape hatch. The solution then will not be to follow up on any painful "cuts", but rather to allow these taxes on "the rich" to expire. In other words, they will raise tax rates!

I don't even have time to go into the problems with the twelve member "super Congress" of insiders who have been given the extra-constitutional power to determine where the mythical future decelerated increases will come from.

All the GOP House had to do was stand firm. It did not matter that we had control of only one branch of government, it was the branch from which all funding bills must originate. There was no danger of "default". This was establishment media disinformation. Current revenues are sufficient to pay for interest on the debt, social security, medicare, and defense, plus or minus a few percent. All that would have happened is a partial government shut down until they learned to live within their means, just like all of the rest of us that they are loading down with this debt have to do. What they would not have been able to do is fund their special interests and meddlesome programs that they have no Constitutional authority to fund in the first place.

Each and every one of Arkansas' representatives have indicated they will vote for this travesty, as they voted for the Boehner cave. If they do, I say this: Some of you may know some of them. Maybe you worked to get them elected. Maybe they have you charmed. It's time to get beyond that. I will be blunt, as I always am. If you ever vote for any of these men again, you are part of the problem.

You and your friends, Be Your Own Party.