After Democrats said a short-term debt-limit deal that kicks the can down the road to be picked up again 6-months from now in the middle of an election season is a NON-STARTER - guess what Speaker of the House John Boehner did yesterday? He released a short-term debt-limit deal that kicks the can down the road to be picked up again 6-months from now in the middle of an election season. That's right - a few days after Boehner took his toys and went home - breaking off negotiations with the White House and accusing the President of playing politics - Boehner offered up a debt-limit plan soaked in politics that includes NO revenue raisers and doesn't solve our debt-problem AT ALL. In fact - the credit rating agency Standard and Poor's warned that if Boehner's plan is passed to avoid an immediate default next week - the agency will STILL downgrade our debt because the Boehner plan is nothing more than a gimmick.
So now the only viable solution seems to be Harry Reid's plan which also isn't balanced since it includes NOT ONE single penny in tax increases on corporations, millionaires, and billionaires. But at least it saves entitlements from deep cuts. The President threw his weight behind the Reid plan last night in a speech to the nation - signaling that a balanced approach is now off the table in debt-limit negotiations and that working people will bear much of the burden of deficit reduction - just as Republicans wanted. Regardless of what plan passes out of Congress at this point - working people and the middle-class in the country are going to get a bad deal. And we can thank corporate shills like Tom Friedman, virtually all of the corporate media, and the lobbyists for the billionaire class pushing the story that there some mythical "centrist" voter out there who's worried about US debt, loves so-called "free trade," and thinks Social Security and Medicare are too generous - but doesn't care at all about jobs for it.
Perhaps most tragically, it seems the White House is buying the myth, instead of rolling back the Reagan tax cuts and bringing our jobs back home from overseas. Welcome to the next Great Depression.
-Thom
(What do you think the Democrats should do? Tell us here.)
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