Ronald Reagan was known as the Great Communicator because of his willingness to talk to the voting public. With that in mind, it is starting to seem that President Barack Obama should be called the Great Capitulator. Like Neville Chamberlain, this latest cave in of the president will not bring ,"peace in our time" either. In the trumped up totally created debt ceiling crisis the Republicans are about to get everything they wanted while Democrats get nothing unless you call no more debt ceiling problems until after the 2012 election something, which doesn't help Democrats except Obama.
The continually reported deal contains three trillion in spending cuts, a Super Congress that can cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Securty to ribbons without having the Republicans suffer the consequences for cutting the heart and soul of the Democratic Party out of the budget and will end the New Deal safety net for all Americans in need. The deal will also give the Republicans a balanced budget amendment vote of some type and the only thing they give up is a debt ceiling vote until after the 2012 election while Obama's giving away everything that is left of what his party once stood for. What a pathetic deal when if he had any guts he would have just invoked the 14th Amendment and dared the Right to sue. Even if he had ultimately lost, I believe many Democrats would have had far more respect for him than most will now.
Progressives believe he has done nothing except ignore this wing of his party. He did little to fight for Employee Free Choice. He did little to push for a public option in his health care plan, he has done essentially nothing on Wall Street reform and has continued to act as if the failed economic policies of the Republicans will somehow work despite the fact the very policies Republicans are pushing did much to create the deficit in the first place by crashing the economy.
Economist Paul Krugman on an ABC roundtable discussion on This Week with Christianne Amanpour noted, "We have 9 percent unemployment. These spending cuts are going to worsen unemployment." Further in the same discussion Krugman stated, "There is no light at the end of the tunnel. Were having a debate in Washington, all about Gee, we'll make the economy worse but will we make it worse on 90 percent of Republican terms or 100 percent? The answer is 100 prcent."
The Republicans will argue you can't raise taxes on the job creators but in any economy the truth is business owners do not create jobs demand for products create jobs and there has been little demand for almost three years now. Businesses and business owners are in it to make a profit. They don't make a profit by creating jobs they make a profit by selling products.
The short form version of economics is to think of our economic policy like a see saw. The economy is the fulcrum and you have supply on one end demand on the other. For thirty years Republicans have been taking from the demand side to enrich the Wealthy (supply side) so now the see saw is tipped up with a larded up supply side sitting on the ground and demand up in the air. What we are doing with continued spending cuts is lard up the supply side even more then wondering why demand is still sitting up in the air. From an economics standpoint cutting spending is incredibly stupid.
It is also incredibly stupid at a time when our nations infrastructure is about to collapse. Estimates are that it would cost three trillion dollars if we started today to begin to face our crumbling infrastructure. We have roads that are crumbling, bridges that are deficient from an engineering stand point and in some danger of collapse and water and sewer systems that are held together with bailing wire and barely functional. That doesn't even get us into the dysfunctional electrical grid we have that we ignore because Republicans haven't the slightest idea how to govern and instead of trying to learn dismantle government instead. Infrastructure projects alone could put millons of the unemployed back to work and another benefit of doing the exact opposite of what will be done is this would of course decrease the deficit because of more revenues due to more people working.
This nation does not create wealth because we make very little. We need to rebuild our manufacturing base and spend money on research and development so that we can take the lead in the new green world economy we are going to need to create if we want to continue to live on a planet that is getting warmer and the weather more extreme no matter what lie Republicans tell themselves. We cannot go back to the economy the way it was before their faulty economics drove America into the ground.
The latest news indicates that the delay in announcing the debt ceiling is because Progressives are balking at giving away their election prospects for Obama. Moveon.org and other Progressive groups are now weighing in on their displeasure with this deal. Those in denial of how weak Obama is will tell themselves he had no choice but you are lying to yourselves. This latest hostage taking began with the cave in on the Bush tax cuts and won't stop as long as Obama is in the White House. This time Obama has made America a much different place than the nation I was born into. We are about to become a place where compassion and sharing are a weakness and selfish greedy arrogance and ignorance will be considered strength. America loses a lot no matter what happens now with the debt ceiling.
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