Something for Nothing

All politicians know that the lure of something-for-nothing is a powerful vote getter but Republicans have raised something-for-nothing to an art form. Every election they promise to cut taxes and assure us that cutting taxes will magically increase revenue and balance the budget. Then when the deficits inevitably balloon out of control they tell us “deficits don’t matter.” Deficits do matter. Their policies of huge tax cuts to the rich, huge increases in military spending and the resulting huge runaway deficits are destroying the dollar. In the last 8 years our national debt has doubled to 10 trillion dollars and growing. The interest we pay on this debt (much of it to China) is approaching $500 billion per year. The total cost for the Iraq war is going to add another 2-3 trillion. We are shipping another $700 billion per year off to foreign countries for oil. To paraphrase T. Boone Pickens, “Our country is being bled dry by the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world.”
Getting rid of regulation created the housing mess; instead of meeting sensible requirements to qualify for a home loan, anyone with a pulse could get a million dollar NINJA (No Income No Job or Assets) loan. Bankers could then game the system by bundling these nearly worthless loans into bogus financial instruments without oversight. Surprise! The whole Ponzi scheme collapses and brings our economy down with it. In order to keep the system from completely cratering, the government is likely to incur obligations from Fannie and Freddie which will add another 5 trillion dollars to the national debt. We are now in danger of following the Soviet Union into financial collapse. In light of the traitorous words of Republican strategist Grover Norquist who, in a rare moment of honesty, admitted their real goal is to weaken the government of the United States to the point “where we can drown it in the bathtub”, I say mission accomplished. They have essentially done for our country what they did for New Orleans.
Just imagine how much better off we would be if we had been following a progressive agenda for the last 8 years. The deficit would be much less because the rich would be paying their fair share. We would be importing less foreign oil because would have made strides toward energy independence since it would have been a national priority and our new cars would be getting higher mileage to comply with stricter standards. The tax base would be broadened by millions of new middle class jobs designing, manufacturing, installing and servicing the new energy economy. The housing debacle would not have occurred because we would have had sensible regulation requiring minimum standards when applying for loans. The moral authority of our country wouldn’t be in tatters because we would not have thrown away our principles just to seek vengeance and torture a few suspected terrorists. And we wouldn’t have wasted so much precious blood and drained our treasury in senseless and unnecessary war.
The next President is going to inherit a real mess and the worst is probably yet to come; the people in charge for the last eight years have through a combination of needless war, incompetence, deregulation, privatization, and massive tax cuts for the wealthy looted the treasury and turned the machinery of our economy into smoking wreckage. Unfortunately, we can’t change the past but we can change our future. Putting all the negative political ads aside, the choice in this election couldn’t be clearer; we can continue the same neocon policies that have done so much damage to our country or we can choose a new direction of enlightened progressive change.