Reagan raised the debt ceiling to pay for corrupt flukes like Star Wars.
(didn't hear a peep)
Bush Raised it to pay for 2 wars, Medicare D (a giveaway to big pharma), and tax cuts to billionaires.
(didn't hear a peep)
When the 2012 Republican president raises the debt ceiling to pay for the War on Terrorism
(we won't hear a peep)
The problem with the current political debate is that American voters gets his information from corporate captured media sources.
The debt ceiling has to be raised because the major earners of profit -- the corporations who get subsidies and bailouts from government -- don't pay taxes.
The American government and the American media have been captured by mega-corporations. They are getting rid of the middle class in order to bestow dynastic wealth on a small cadre of owners and shareholders. They pit average Americans against each other while they loot the country.
Ronald Reagan protected American car makers from foreign competition in the early 80s -- he imposed limitations on free trade; he was an ol' timey protectionist when he needed to be. [Ross Perot contra-NAFTA anyone?] Today Reagan would be considered a socialist. Reagan protected the big 3 because he wanted to keep American jobs. Why? Because without the middle class consumer, there would be no American economy.
America is committing financial suicide by letting GOP corporate functionaries undermine the very programs that enabled middle class consumption. The government used to prevent the concentration of wealth in too few hands - by taxing the very top in order to make sure the middle class was solvent enough to consume and drive the economy. America's consumption economy was built on the premise that hard workers would have enough financial security to consume. This is why Social Security and Medicare were so vital -- because these programs, by taking mom and dad off the books, enabled middle class families to consume. (The current GOP is ripping at the very fabric that sustained middle class consumption. They are trapped in the dogmatic echo chamber of dated ideas. In the 80s, after 30 years of regulatory increases and high taxation, taking care of the suppliers made sense -- there was room to lighten their load and realize some efficiency gains. But the instruction manual is different when you've had 30 years of deregulation, globalization, and tax cuts. We have completely destroyed middle class jobs & benefits, and with these things we have undermined the very demand which drives consumption, yet we are monomaniacally pursuing supply side policies. Given how much money corporations are sitting on, this is insane. The problem is not that suppliers don't have sufficient capital to invest; it's that there is no consumer to consume. And what is the GOP answer to this? Make even more draconian cuts to the middle class, the further undermining their ability to consume)
[We were told that if the top was not taxed, they would invest and add jobs. This turned out to be false. They created speculative casino capitalism instead. They created monopolies where costs rise and service/quality decreases - the opposite of what was promised in 1980. They used their extra money to buy politicians and oil futures. Why on earth would they invest and add jobs if they no longer paid their workers enough to consume?]
Capital got tired of supporting an expensive, entitlement-fed middle class. They yearned for the cheap sweat shop labor found in dictator-lead, freedom hating countries. So they shipped jobs to sweat shops, and the middle class died. And now we wonder why the economy is dead. There is no consumer. For God's sake, it got so bad that we even had to hawk our houses. The middle class is out of jobs and credit. The game is over.
The middle class is what defined America against the 3rd world and the Soviet Union, where you had a small wealthy elite surrounded by massive poverty (aka cheap labor with no political power). Reagan, Clinton, and Bush got rid of the middle class by giving capitalists 3rd world labor in America. This was the point of the Reagan Revolution. Every time you people undermine a middle class entitlement, you undermine the ability of average consumers to buy things - and you ensure the economy will never recover. You don't understand the contract that the postwar middle class was founded upon. It was not founded upon monopolies and ultra cheap labor. We have become the 3rd world. We have a decedent wealthy elite surrounded by scared, confused, powerless, manipulated serfs who are strategically distracted by wedge issues. This country has never been richer. Corporations are doing better than ever. They are sitting on more cash than at any time in the last 20 years. The country is awash in money. The problem is that it is locked up in a very small number of hands. IT NEVER TRICKLED DOWN.
(morons. you got punk'd by voodoo economics)
You know not what you do.
