How does "Pay as you go" legislation work when you have no money. Seriously!
More importantly, we can look back in history and know that one of the worst things are government can do right now is suddenly decided that a massive recession, even though most people would call it a depression, is the best time to balance the budget. Apparently the FISCAL CONSERVATIVES that were running things during the Bush years ran deficits to the point that the national debt is so large there are real concerns as to how we will ever be able to make payments.
Soooooo.. the one hundred billion a year we need to pay for healthcare reform , never mind that the funds are already there, is too much spending and going to add to the deficit at a time when the national balance sheets are still reeling from the couple trillion a year the Bush administration was spending on a war of aggression in Iraq. (Have you heard that Carl Rove states in his book that that he knew it was unlikely we would go to war with Iraq without the weapons of mass destruction threat, did he not in the past admit they knew the intelligence on Iraq's WMD's was out of date. So in a way isn't he admitting that they used any intelligence they could find to make their case for war, validity be damned. And isn't there a little thing called the Downing Street Memo that also supports that idea. If memory serves me correctly that memo said something about fixing the facts around a policy objective of going to war. Hmmmm)
Anyway..... It is okay for a Republican to spend trillions, each year, on a war of aggression but a Democrat can't spend one trillion over a ten year period to make sure 31 million more people have access to health care. Maybe if Obama called it "The War on Health Care" he would get the green light. Gotta fully fund the war effort you know.
This pay as you go shit is being pushed on the jobs issue too. Some souther hick that used to play baseball and then managed to dupe a bunch of other southern hicks to voting him in to the Senate, I know there is a joke about throwing his constituents a curve ball in there somewhere, actually used Pay Go, which he did not support, as his reason why they should not extend unemployment benefits one more day, "Cause they are not paid for."
For a minute just think about that, cause for one day this situation existed. Current unemployment is just below 10%. The "Real" unemployment number is more like 16% they estimate. So currently 6% of the country has no job and no income to speak of. For one day while this jack off from Tennessee was screwing things up the other 10% was losing their unemployment too. Can you imagine how bad it would get if 16% of the country had no income and no way to take care of them selves.
It is amazing to me how the Republicans are simply in the way and stopping everything at every opportunity. Pay Go was actually something they came up with. Obama tried to pander to them by adopting it and the minute he went for the Republicans wouldn't touch it with a fifty foot pole. The R's wanted a deficit commission, Obama took the fangs out of that proposal but still gave them the commission. The R's wanted that commission to be able to strip and gut the government at every turn to save more on the bottom line.
Wouldn't it be nice if the R's stopped shutting down government for everything and actually let something happen. I think they are too scared that Obama's plans might work and might make him look good, so the only sure way to make him look bad is to block everything.
Pay Go was never about paying for things as you go. There is no Go, and the R's are going to make damn sure there is no Paying either, at least not while they are not in power.
Pay and Go
Or
Sit and Sulk
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