Week fo 03/11/2019

The National Debt Bludgeon
– by David Matthews 2

Picture this scene in your local big box store...

A man and a woman are shopping with their kids.  They have a long list of things to get but little money.  They have a credit card, but with a high interest rate and huge debt that they really don’t want to add to, and a hard time keeping up the payments.

The first place they go to is the clothing department.  The kids need new clothes, but the father continually nixes everything the kids want to get because it’s “just too expensive”.  The mother says the kids need new clothes, but the father says that they can make do with what they have.  Just sew up the holes.  The mother says they can’t because the clothes are so worn, they can’t be sewed back.  The father eventually relents but limits the number of clothes they buy to the cheapest.  And, he says, there’s always Goodwill.

They pass by the electronics department, and the kids say they need the latest game, but both parents say no, because paying $60 for a game they’ll get tired of in a week isn’t worth the cost.  They do point to the cheap retro games, but the kids think they’re lame.  The family doesn’t even dare go near the toy department, much to the protesting of the kids.

The automotive department brings a little drama, as the father says they need to change the oil on their pickup, but the mother wonders why he “needs” the most expensive brand.  He also looks at new shiny rims, but the mother immediately says no.

They finally get to the grocery department, and here the battle begins.  They need food.  But the father doesn’t want them to get anything because it is all “too expensive”.  Why drink fruit juice when there’s water from the tap?  The dog deserves good food, but not the pricy stuff.  Besides, the dog eats their table scraps anyway.  Why buy chopped steak when there’s microwave food in the freezer section?  Bread?  Milk?  There’s a food pantry they can go visit.

In the end, they get just enough, but far from what they need, and the father complains all the way home about the price of things and how hard it will be to pay the bills and the credit card debt, which they had to add to.  But, later that evening, the father does come back from the store for “something he forgot”; namely ammo and beer and munchies for his regular weekend hunting trip with his friends.  Not to mention some munchies for the kids so they won’t tell their mother.  Oh, and he did get that premium motor oil for his truck along with a snarky new bumper sticker.  All of which also went on that credit card that he previously complained about.

That, my friends and dear readers, is our nation.

Let’s get a few things out of the way.  Yes, we have a huge problem with the national debt.  And the deficit.  And we’re spending more and more money on paying the interest on the debt because we keep blowing it up.  We wouldn’t know how to spend within our means even if we were forced to.  And we can’t now. 

Our debt is so astronomically high, we will never be able to pay it off.  Ever.  The only way out of it would be a civilization-ending event.  Maybe that’s real reason why the conservatives are so hell-bent on ruining the planet for the rest of us.

And yet, even if we accept the problem, we refuse to truly take responsibility for it.

I have noticed that the only time… the *only* time… that the conservatives recognize the multi-trillion-dollar debt is when a Democrat is in the White House, or when someone proposes a federal project that does not involve guns, cops, prisons, or war.  There are conservative so-called “experts” from so-called think tank groups that spew never-ending rants in all the newspapers about how bad the debt is and how it is crippling America and how we need to stop spending money completely in order to deal with the problem.  They spew those articles out like bulimics with a gallon of ipecac anytime there’s talk about spending for infrastructure, or for foreign aid, or for Medicaid and Medicare, or education, or to fix the healthcare problem.  Oh, we supposedly can’t even begin to think about those things because of the debt!  But when it comes to bombs, bullets, tanks, prisons, they’re painfully silent.  No amount is too great to spend for those things.

The GOP had no qualms about spending for unlimited war when President George W. Bush was in the White House and they were in charge of the purse strings.  Every program they wanted went through with no worry at all about the deficit or the debt.  Wage unlimited war around the world?  Go for it!  We’ll settle up later.  It’s only when they lost control of the Congress in 2007 did they start talking about the debt that they themselves had amassed and then blamed on the Democrats. 

The GOP screamed like children throwing a class-4 tantrum in the Walmart for every day that President Barack Obama was in the White House.  Everything was about the debt!  Everything!  We could no longer “pay” for the very wars they themselves created.  We could no longer pay for the very programs they had no problem paying for previously.  Hell, they shut down the government several times over it!  They screamed and shrieked and stamped their feet and threatened to hold their breath until their hypocritical faces turned blue over the debt that they themselves helped expand.

And then… crickets... when their new lord and savior, Narcissist Donald Trump, inhabited the White House.  For two years, no talk about debt or deficits. No talk about how we can afford to pay for things as the GOP handed out tax cuts and tax breaks to corporations and wealthy Americans.  No talk about debt ceilings.  Trump starts trade wars with China and then eagerly pledges billions in federal handouts to American farmers for compensation, and nobody in the GOP raises even an eyebrow!

And let’s not forget Narcissist Trump’s ego-wall.  A monument to his overinflated ego that costs billions and billions more than he asks, and he continually asks for more and more.  Oh, and it is an ego-wall that he repeatedly promised that Mexico would pay for but now he demands that the American taxpayers pay for.

It’s only now, when the GOP loses control of the House and the financial purse-strings, do they start talking about debt and deficits again.  These supposed “masters” of fiscal responsibility that only seem to recognize there’s a problem when they are not the ones in power.

That’s not taking responsibility.  That’s using the debt as a political weapon.  A political cudgel by which conservatives wield for their own exclusive use.  No different than that abusive father who uses the family’s money as a weapon to deprive his family of the essentials while allowing him to buy luxuries.

Let’s get brutally honest here... we can never start to be responsible with America’s financial problems as long as they are used as a weapon for one political faction over the rest of the nation.  Yes, the debt is a problem.  But we also cannot just stop federal spending.  There are programs that need to be funded.  Services that must go on.  Employees and contractors that must be paid.  Contrary to the Narcissistic President’s business practices, you can’t expect those folks to work for free.

The conservatives and the GOP as a party – a party that this commentator used to be a card-carrying member of – have long forfeited any legitimate claim of being fiscally responsible through their hypocritical use of the debt as a weapon.  You don’t wage unlimited war worldwide, you don’t provoke war worldwide, you don’t hand out tax breaks and tax cuts to the millionaires and billionaires and provoke trade wars, you don’t shoot up the debt to where it is today, and then turn around and blame everyone but yourselves for it. If there is any faction in the world that should be made to sit out of all future dealings with the debt, it’s them.

By the way, it should be noted that Narcissist Trump’s trade war with China and his demand for an ego-wall along the border with Mexico are actually threatening two of the three largest purchasers of our debt.  Do we really want to see what happens if they decide to abruptly cash in on the notes they have?  Or, worse yet, not buy any more?  We’ve seen what happens when the banks do it to ordinary Americans.  They did it with glee just ten years ago and millions of Americans suffered for it.  Do you want to try it on the national scale?

The hypothetical abusive father who lords over the family finances and racks up the debt can only go so far before forces beyond his control step in and put an end to it.  He plays a dangerous game, but, at least with him, it’s just his family that bears the brunt of that folly.  It’s not the whole neighborhood.  Or, for that matter, the whole nation.