known by the company you keep

It should come as no surprise that Iowa’s Republicans Thursday voted to shut down the government by voting against extending the debt ceiling. The reasoning that Republicans have for using the debt ceiling as a hostage is not logical. Also using the debt ceiling as a hostage scares financial markets and puts the US in danger of defaulting which would cause a world wide financial panic.

So the party of so-called “financial responsibility” is once again acting like a drunk uncle who refuses to pay the debts that HE ran up. Based on yet another financial scare brought on by the Republican Party we would have to rate their financial acumen as a Zero on a scale of 1 to 10.

It is shameful. Grassley has been a Party hack on debt ceiling votes since it was first used as a weapon during the Clinton days. “Gotta stop the Dems spending” is his old mantra. Yet anyone who follows the nitty-gritty of budgets and politics know that the Democratic Party has been the fiscally responsible party forever. 

When FDR was rolling out the New Deal, programs were paid for with only what would now be a relatively small amount of debt. That was true of Medicare and Medicaid and other of LBJ’s Great Society programs. The guy who really rolled up the debt was Republican Saint Ronald Reagan. He rolled it to over $3T and the dam was burst.

Bush the first said “No New taxes” and rolled up a couple of Trillion more in only four years. Clinton came in and over eight years was able to actually reduce the debt. Clinton was paying it off at the pace of a half a trillion dollars a year. Had Al gore rightfully taken his spot as the next president there was concern that the debt may actually be paid off. That would have caused some interesting fiscal problems of a different kind.

But the Supreme Court stepped in and appointed Bush the Lesser as president. One of his first acts was a huge tax cut for the wealthy. This was the first of many acts that Bush would do to blow a huge hole in the debt. Add in wars that were put on our credit card – along with yet another tax cut for the wealthy and we could watch those debt numbers zoom.

Obama came in and started to pay the debt down, but many pieces of toxic legislation prevented him doing so. 

And then Trump! Massive tax cuts for the wealthy on 2017, which had a zero net return for the country. A massive recession brought on by his pathetic, probably criminal, response to the pandemic that shuttered businesses and still is keeping millions out of stores.

Raising the debt ceiling is not a blessing to allow the current and future administrations to add on more spending or cut more taxes. Raising the debt ceiling is necessary in order to have money to pay the debts that previous congresses ran up. Most of those debts were run up by Republican congresses by starting unfunded wars and by cutting huge amounts of taxes.

It is scary to me that we have 5 such totally uninformed boobs voting on matters which could ruin both the country and most families financially. It is sickening to think that Chuck Grassley, the self-styled financial genius hasn’t learned what the debt ceiling is or the effects of defaulting in 40 years in the senate. 

Well, whoops – seems Grassley had no trouble raising the debt ceiling under Bush the Lesser and Trump. Guess his idea is to cause the country to have a massive depression and then put the blame not on himself who helped cause it but on the President who could do nothing about it.

Guess Chuck and Miller-Meeks, Joni Ernst, Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson are all more than willing to let your family burn to the ground just for political points. While I would like to say remember this when you vote next year it looks like we will probably have several rounds of this same game. Each one will be equally dangerous. If the Republicans win, we all pay big time. They won’t.

Remember just a few months ago when people were getting vaccinated and the Biden Administration was sending out stimulus checks in anticipation of us beating the pandemic and re-opening safely. Republicans marshaled their troops whose lives they cared not one whit about to avoid vaccination and set themselves up as sacrificial lambs to stop the economy. This is similar.

Republicans will be happy to sacrifice YOUR family so they can garner votes and make the administration look bad. They care not one whit about you or your life.

And do not forget, this will be one of their weapons when they try to end Medicare and Social Security.