Debt Talks

The Responses from the administration and the lack of serious critical coverage by the news about anyone but the republicans has been one of the most absurd situations I can remember. For some reason the media, Fox included only see and repeat the side the democrats put forward; that the republicans are pushing this to a crisis.

For some unknown reason there is almost no mention of the democrats not only being the party of NO as they have rejected every bill put to them, but they are also the party of irresponsibility in that this really falls far more on them than on republicans as they have not even offered a budget in 2 years and they refuse any budget submitted to them. Yet somehow this is the fault of the republicans? Everyone continues to repeat the party line that this is because the republicans refuse to compromise.

It is impossible to compromise with a party that offers nothing concrete. All they do is say no to everything you offer and then continue to press that you need to give more with no specific end in view when you will have done enough. For unexplained reasons this has actually worked in the past it and may be why they continue to do it. The pressure continues to be on the republicans to keep giving. It is rather like watching what the Palestinians do to the Israelis. They are asked to give and give and it is never enough. They are just expected to keep giving because the other side is not satisfied with what they've gotten so far.

The Republicans have become the party of appeasement. At this point I'm quite confident they will just continue to give in. It is like watching a dysfunctional family with serious co-dependent issues.

Timothy Geitner was asked many times if they have any specific plans of who will get there checks if we get past the deadline for the debt talks. He did nothing but dodge and continue with veiled threats of that some people would suffer. Basically this is either saying they don't have any plans, or they plan to make sure that people don't get their social security and military checks so the pressure will be on the republicans, because clearly it's their fault that nothing go done even though they're the only ones offering plans, or they do plan to make sure all the right people get what they're supposed to but they don't want to say that for strategic political reasons. If they said they were going to do the responsible thing people would be reassured, the markets would be reassured and there would be no more pressure on the republicans to continue to compromise to the point of making whatever they settle on completely impotent.

These are not games they should be playing with the American economy. It is like they want crisis. At almost every turn the White House has either created or at least declared crisis every time they want something and so far it has worked every time. Why wouldn't they keep doing the same thing? It gives the republicans cover so they can say, "We had to do something, and though it's not the best, at least it got us through..."

The worst thing is that I believe both sides understand they should take responsibility for the initial predicament we're in, but both are more interested in pointing fingers than actually getting the problems resolved even if it means doing the unpopular but right thing. As many have said, we simply don't have the money. Whether people like it or not, sooner or later people aren't going to get their checks because the congress has been willing to promise every benefit under the sun, presented them all as free or gifts from the government as though they don't realize the money has to come from somewhere.

The insanity has to stop somewhere and if our leaders don't take some decisive action fairly quickly to seriously get the debt under control the crisis actually will be a real crisis and one that we may never recover from.

We the people of the United States ought to start acting like adults as well and stop demand all kinds of "free" stuff from the government and tell them to just stop it. We as individuals can live without some of those benefits but out nations cannot survive with them.