What if they threw a government shutdown and nobody
noticed? The wolf-crying Democrats had
secretly desired a government shutdown so they could blame it on the House
Republicans and thus score some political points. The only problem is no one really noticed.
What we did notice is, like all the sequestration
wolf-crying, the disaster never materialized.
And as with the sequestration, I must say I was surprised and impressed
by Speaker John Boehner’s determination to stand his ground.
Whether or not you really care about a government
shutdown really says something about where you are on the political
spectrum. Far-left liberals were
freaking out over a government shutdown.
Far-right conservatives wanted to see it happen. I must confess that I was in that latter
group. Not because I wanted to see
anyone hurt or even inconvenienced. I
just wanted people to understand what a non-issue a government shutdown really
is.
Do you realize that the government has shut down 17
times since 1970? Sometimes for several
weeks at a time. The only one I really
remember was the face-off between Newt and the boys and Bill Clinton in 1995. I remember that one so vividly because I had
a ringside seat, broadcasting from the basement of the U.S. Capitol for the
duration. What I remember were the lies
coming from the Democrats. They claimed
the Republicans wanted to cut Medicare and give a tax cut to their rich constituents. The truth of the matter was the Republicans
weren’t cutting anything. They simply
wanted to slow the growth of Medicare.
The news media piled on the Republicans and blamed
them for the shutdown but I have no recollection of any negative repercussions
from the government closing its doors for a few days. In fact, it was the government shutdown that
lay the groundwork for slowing the growth of the entire budget and getting Bill
Clinton to sign welfare reform after using his veto pen on it twice
before. The end result was we had a
balanced budget by 1998 expressly because the Republicans pushed the issue of
spending restraint. Without even cutting
a dime, just slowing the growth, revenue was allowed to catch up with spending
and we balanced the budget, no thanks to the free-wheeling, spend-like-a-drunken-sailor
Democrats. (No offense to you drunken
sailors.)
Had 9/11 not happened we likely would’ve seen
balanced budgets all the way through the Bush administration. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine not having to raise the debt
ceiling? Of course, President Obama says
that raising the debt ceiling doesn’t mean we’re raising the debt. Yeah, he actually said that. No, Mr. President, I’m sure it means we’re
getting ready to instantly balance the budget.
So, again the president and the Democrats are
wolf-crying about the debt ceiling. They
say if we don’t raise the ceiling we’ll default on our debt. Think about that for a moment. We’re nearly $17 trillion in debt and they’re
trying to tell us if we don’t go into more debt we’ll default on
everything? Please. It’s like saying you’re making payments on a
house and two cars and when the bank won’t approve your loan for a third car
you’re going to default on everything.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
We’re bringing in over $2.5 trillion a year. We have more than enough money to pay the
debt payments. We may not have enough
money for all these liberal welfare programs but that’s the point. If we don’t raise the debt ceiling it means
we’ll have to live off what we bring in.
Is that such a horrible thing?
No comments:
Post a Comment