I was randomly browsing YouTube tonight and I stumbled upon a rather interesting and prophetic video in which Speaker John Boehner is discussing his stance on the budget deficit. In it, they discuss the slowing recovery (which continues today) and explain that experts agree that government needs another stimulus. Boehner snaps back, stating that he didn't care about the econmists' opinion and that raising taxes, even by reversing the revenue-damaging Bush cuts would be detrimental to the economy. Then Fox News counters by tallying the nearly $3Trillion (with a T) cost of keeping all of those cuts. Guess how much money we need to raise the debt ceiling by to avoid a default?
We CANNOT ignore the writing on the wall. We don't just have a SPENDING problem. We also have a REVENUE problem. That deficit isn't going away on its own and the economy isn't going to magically recover by itself. We had a chance to avoid a lot of today's troubles with a combination of cuts AND new tax revenue, but we allowed this Washington meat puppet to scare us out of it, thinking there would be some sort of "trickle-down" effect if we kept the cuts. Trickle down has NEVER worked. The economy naturally trickles up. You can't keep cutting taxes and then bitch when they need to be partially restored to seal the deficit. Such actions will amount to a plutocracy that benefits the few while hurting the many.
Here is another video in which Boehner again dodges the dissonance of handling a deficit without touching taxes.
We were warned numerous times by the experts of the need for a balanced approach to the deficit, but never listened. As the deadline for raising the debt ceiling draws near, it may be too little too late...