Debt Ceiling Crisis

I have been following the standoff going on in our national government regarding the debt ceiling crisis with increasing dismay. It looks like a completely unnecessary disaster in the making, with one side, President Obama and the Democrats, stepping up to the table willing to make compromises for the better good of the nation, while the Republicans on the other side are playing petty politics, sucking up to extremists in the right-wing talk show media, and refusing to budge on anything.

Yes, we have a problem with our national debt. When Democratic president Bill Clinton left office in January 2001 we had reached a point, though, when we were working on reducing it by having a string of annual surpluses. Then Republican George W. Bush stepped into the office and immediately began preaching that the government was holding the [rich] people's money and that they could do better things with it. And so began the shortfall of our revenue necessary to fund the government and keep it from having to borrow money from abroad to stay afloat. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, enhanced nationwide security efforts, and our subsequent incursion into Afghanistan to weed out Al-Qaeda and drive out their Taliban sponsors from power understandably involved increased spending and a higher deficit. But Bush's inexplicable decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and stage a massive military occupation for years hence broke the budget, with nary a Republican cry of protest. In fact, they voted en masse, including folks like congressional leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, to lift the debt ceiling 19 times during Bush's two terms in office. But the moment a Democrat stepped in, even in the midst of an economic calamity unseen since the Great Depression, those same Republicans suddenly became budget hawks, treating federal spending as anathema now that it was largely in the hands of the hated Democrats.

I don't know how this crisis will play itself out or who will gain politically from it. Common sense would have told me that the contrived tea party crap that has been going on for the last couple of years would have fallen flat and that the Republicans would have been punished, not rewarded, at the polls for their intransigence in opposing practically everything that President Obama was trying to do for the country. In fact, several of their prominent members, including Senator McConnell, had publicly stated that their primary goal was to make our president a failure! And yet my fellow citizens, in their infinite foolishness, collectively gave those Republicans control of the U.S. House of Representatives, a net gain of six Senate seats, and a net gain of several state governorships (and, very sadly, a teabagger as governor in my home state of Florida).

So I can't control how other people will react to what's going on. But it sure would be nice for the politicians to stop acting like marionette puppets and begin to work for the interests of the people they were elected to serve. And that means ALL the people!