I normally would not post a video from Forbes, but this clip shows the ire of Democrats at Matt Gaetz public pronouncement that Republicans are holding the country hostage: (2 minutes):

They can’t negotiate because they are simply too extreme on issues. So they have resorted to a hostage situation to try to get their extreme policies implemented. These policies by themselves will damage the economy if they don’t shut down the economy. So with far right extremist MAGA Republican policies, we are literally damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

Once again I must reiterate that if the extremist MAGAs were truly serious about the debt they would include raising taxes, especially on the wealthy, in their negotiations. But the extremist MAGA Republicans will not even allow tax raises to come up. 

Since most of our debt has been built on the tax cuts for the rich, George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and major recessions caused by Republican fiscal policy trusting extremist MAGA Republicans to be sincere in fixing any monetary problems is like believing elephants can fly.

Just as a reminder in the past century we have had the Hoover Depression (also known as the Republican Depression and the Great Depression), a recession as the Eisenhower administration ended, another recession as Nixon-Ford administration ended, a major recession caused by Reagan’s tax cuts, a recession that pushed George HW Bush out of office, George W. Bush’s disastrous end of his 2nd term as the world hovered on a possible Depression and then Trump’s covid mismanagement financial crisis.

And now we are at the precipice of a manufactured fiscal crisis that threatens to wreck an economy that is on fire thanks to Biden policies. Extremist MAGA Republicans see an economic disaster that will impoverish millions in the US and send shock waves around the world as policy that is good for them. How screwed up is that?

Yet thanks to their almost 100% control of the narrative through media ownership, Americans are told and then regurgitate lies that claim that the country is about to go down the tubes because some poor person is getting $50 worth of groceries a week on SNAP.

INDIVISIBLE in their email sent on Thursday helps to put this manufactured crisis in perspective:

In her substack email on Thursday Professor Heather Cox Richardson noted that while our debt sounds large historically it is not and the crisis is manufactured not real:  

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre informed reporters about the budget negotiations and averting default, calling it a “manufactured crisis.” She called out members of the far-right Freedom Caucus for referring to the full faith and credit of the United States as a hostage, and reiterated that it is the duty of every member of Congress to avert the default that will cost millions of jobs lost, devastate retirement accounts, and throw the United States—and the world—into a recession.

“Let’s be clear about what Republicans are demanding in exchange for doing their job and preventing a default,” she said. “Earlier this year, they put forward an extreme package of devastating cuts that would slash…support for education, law enforcement, food assistance—the list goes on and on and on and on—by what now would be about 30 percent.”

While Jean-Pierre didn’t say it, the Republicans’ insistence that spending is out of control does not reflect reality. In fact, discretionary spending has fallen more than 40% in the past 50 years as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 11% to 6.3%. What has driven rising deficits are the George W. Bush and Donald Trump tax cuts, which will have added $8 trillion and $1.7 trillion, respectively, to the debt by the end of the 2023 fiscal year. (note – my bolding – ed.)

The U.S. is far below the average of the 37 other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental forum of democracies with market economies, in our tax levies. According to the Center for American Progress, if we taxed at the average OECD level, over ten years we would have an additional $26 trillion in revenue. If we taxed at the average of European Union nations, we would have an additional $36 trillion. 

Create a crisis and then refuse to do anything about it while using their ownership of media to poison the atmosphere with lies – a real extremist MAGA operation at its best! How can Americans vote for these people who want to wreck our country?