The crisis that wasn't.

Today is July 11th. I have not written anything on this site for seven months. I have good reason for that. I figure anyone that reads this knows where I stand on things. I don't sit at a desk anymore, and haven't for almost three years now. (Although, if you know anyone hiring, I'm totally willing.) I have a relationship that I don't necessarily feel like writing about. Yada yada yada, I have not been writing. But, as a Michael Corleone once said:


This debt ceiling "crisis" is killing me. We currently are dealing with a Republican Congress holding the American economy hostage in order to cut spending for old people, sick old people, poor people, sick poor people, poor kids and sick poor kids. Why would they do that? Because you can't be taking away corporate jets!!!

That's actually oversimplifying it by a lot. The main reason we can't do it is because Grover Norquist has gotten every single Republican members of Congress to sign a pledge saying they will not vote for a tax increase. Those members of Congress hold to that pledge almost as tight as they hold onto their Bibles. Grover Norquist has said that even getting rid of loopholes, for say corporate jets, is voting for a tax hike. Which would lead to decreased political contributions who voted for that and they would probably be primaried. Nobody likes a primary... well, except me. I love primaries. They are awesome. Especially Republican ones!!

Ok, so, Republicans, at least in the House, are scared to piss off Grover Norquist. I get it. So, here's the question I have: Why don't we just raise the damn debt limit like we always have? This is an even more interesting tale. As you know, we elected a bunch of crazies to the House way back in 2010. It seems silly now, but some folks thought it was a good idea not to vote and the ones that did vote thought the country was turning into some kind of socialist state. I don't really want to rehash all of it, let's just agreed it happened.

Well, those crazy freshmen members, somewhat begrudgingly, voted Rep. John Boehner in as Speaker of the House. John Boehner is a deal maker. John Boehner is not a tea party guy. He's the guy they would be fighting against if they knew enough to know who they should be fighting against.

Anyway, John Boehner likes being Speaker of the House. Who wouldn't? He's got a big gavel. He gets to golf with the President. He gets to golf with lobbyist. He gets to golf with Hank Williams, Jr. Look, the jobs got some perks!!! His handicap is around eight for Christ's sake!!! Do you know how much time that takes? It doesn't just happen!!

So, John Boehner wants to keep his job. So what? Well, he's got this guy underneath him named Eric Cantor that would very much like to be Speaker himself. The freshmen class really likes that guy. He's kinda wacky himself and refuses to call his peeps crazy. They like that. They're not 100% sure about John Boehner.

They are also not 100% sure that we should raise the debt limit. Actually, a lot of them don't think we should. Hell, a lot of them have said that no matter what the deal is they won't vote to raise the debt limit, period. (I know. Crazy, huh? This is what happens when you elect dittoheads.) John Boehner needs these folks to like him so he can keep playing golf at the best courses in America. So, what's he to do?

Right now he seems to have taken the path of trying to get the President to roll over and get the best deal he can get; and, to be honest, he's done pretty well. He's gotten the President to agree to somewhere around a four to five split spending cuts to revenue increases. That's a great deal!!!

But.

But one thing. John Boehner can't make any deal. As discussed, a large part of his caucus refuses to believe we need to raise the debt ceiling. The rest of them say we can't raise revenues one cent. That makes it tough. What's a guy to do? Well, he's stuck with the old, "give us everything we want or we'll blow up the economy" argument. It's a good one. It's worked back in January. Maybe it'll work again.

But what if it doesn't? Will Republicans in the House really push us into another Great Depression just to keep poor kids from eating? They don't have to do this. They could just raise the damn debt ceiling tomorrow like Congresses in the past have done 74 times without any problems. Congress's that cared more about the country than seeing a President fail. Congress's that cared more about the country than what Grover Norquist thought. Congress's that thought about more than just opposing the President.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I believe we are better than this. Do we have a fiscal problem? Yes. We got a huge unemployment problem and a lot more folks retiring than workers to support them. It's a big deal. We won't solve it in the next few weeks. We are going to have to solve it over years. The only thing we can do right now is raise the debt limit in order to not shoot interest rates up and making the problem much much worse.

We are creating a crisis for no reason. We have real several real problems to deal with. Our military is bombing in several countries right now. The unemployment rate is 9.2%. We have many long term fiscal issues. American corporations are investing in other countries rather than creating jobs here. Our infrastructure is outdated and falling apart. I could go on and on. The one thing we don't need to be worrying about is the damn debt ceiling. Instead, Republicans in Congress have made sure it is the only thing we can think about because they oppose the President. Here's hoping the reconsider in the next couple of weeks. Here's hoping we all grow up.