Rewriting history while it happens

I’ve really tried to ignore this debate over the impending debt ceiling fix because it just pisses me off to no end. I know that no matter it turns out, we’re screwed. ROS has been sending me links steadily over the last few days and makes it hard to ignore. She sends this one from the Daily Press about the President’s press conference today (I turned the TV off when he came on);

The White House has insisted that any deal include some mechanism for raising more revenue in order to significantly pay down the deficit, but congressional Republicans have balked at the prospect of tweaking the tax code for deficit reduction. That remains the largest stumbling block in negotiations.

The GOP would instead prefer deep spending cuts past the $2.4 trillion amount by which the administration seeks to raise the debt ceiling. The House hopes to pass a plan next week that includes the cuts, along with a provision for a balanced-budget amendment.

We’ve already established that raising taxes isn’t going to help settle the problem, but the Democrats can’t help themselves from calling for tax hikes. I think it’s in their extra-chromosome DNA. Nice touch, though, calling it “tweaking the tax code”. Maybe we can tweak ourselves out of this mess, huh?

But, this is the line that got me;

“This is not some abstract issue,” Obama said. “Congress has run up the credit card. We now have an obligation to pay our bills.”

As if he had nothing to do with running up the credit card. Yeah, technically, it’s true that it’s largely Congress’ fault, but it was Obama’s glorious agenda that the Democrat Congress enacted – mostly without a single Republican vote in the House. Remember how the Washington Post used to remind of us of that fact after every budget-busting vote in Congress? I wonder why they don’t mention it these days?

What “we” actually had an obligation to do was not enact some of this useless shit we’ve been saddled with over the last two years. There have been myriad examples of why we shouldn’t have written blank checks to employment schemes and turtle tunnels, but I guess Democrats don’t learn from history – history like how the Bush tax cuts actually increased tax revenues and lowered unemployment during his tenure. Just like it worked during the Reagan years.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Congress sucks, Economy