Republicans have built their entire message around the myth that there is a spending crisis in America. What they do not seem willing to admit is that arithmetic demonstrates that their claims are false.
Since President Barack Obama took office, the federal budget deficit has fallen by more than $200 billion.
“Obama inherited a deficit of nearly $1.3 trillion from Bush/Cheney the moment he took the oath of office. This year, however, according to the official data published by the Treasury Department, the deficit was $1.089 trillion,” according to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
So why to Republicans keep warning Americans of impending doom unless austerity measures are implemented immediately?
If Republicans actually admitted that the deficit is already shrinking, their entire argument to scare people into supporting policies that are against their own economic interests would vanish overnight.
The Tea Party wing of the Republican Party has created a mythical monster to sell a spending crisis that is not real.
In convincing people that spending is out of control, they can use that spin to garner support for their plan to dismantle entitlement programs, which they ideologically oppose.
Nobel economist Paul Krugman said, ”What we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road. The modern Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins — but the party doesn’t know how to deal with that failure, and it retains enough power to do immense damage as it strikes out in frustration.”
Gov. Rick Scott has done an amazingly effective job of implementing austerity measures in Florida. Since taking office, the Tea Party Republican has cut Medicaid by 20 percent, cut about a half-million pregnant women and children from the WIC food assistance program, and laid off thousands of state workers, while slashing taxes for the wealthy few.
Scott insisted that the cuts were needed because of the same mythical spending 'crisis' his fellow Republicans in Washington claim. However, like his congressional counterparts, Scott apparently failed to use a calculator in his bookkeeping. Cutting revenue adds to deficit spending.
Gov. Rick Scott, who is up for reelection in 2014, has the lowest approval rating of any governor in the United States.
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