Representative Poe: Re: THE DEBT CEILING; AN AVOIDABLE DISASTER
You threaten our domestic Tranquility,
You weaken our ability to provide for the common defense.
You damage the general Welfare and
You threaten rather than secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
BY YOUR ACTIONS YOU ENDORSE BREAKING THE NATION’S LEGAL OBLIGATIONS. You are promoting breaking the law as a Congressman and a former judge.
Consider;
#1. The Debt Limit is not about honoring existing debts or spending to pay for goods and services already legally authorized or incurred. They became legal obligations when they were originally contracted or performed, not when paid at some future date. To not honor those obligations is to break the law. To even hint that our elected representatives will gamble politically over honoring those obligations is sending shockwaves throughout the world. It threatens the economic security of this great nation.
#2. The Debt Limit is all about new spending within limits it defines. That is as it should be. We are now at the current Debt Limit because for the last decade Congress, both Presidents, Al-Qaeda, and the Economy have all blatantly ignored the Debt Limit as they created, demanded and authorized ever more spending obligations. Massive increased spending for wars, Medicare, the collapse of the economy, massive unemployment combined with the reduced revenues of a slowing economy laid on top of the largest tax cuts in decades just before the spending began to skyrocket all contributed to the Perfect Storm of debt.
#3. It took bipartisan efforts to create the debt. It must take bipartisan efforts to reduce the debt. It took a mix of massive increased spending and massive tax cuts to get into this mess. It is only logical that it will take both massive cutbacks and significant increases in revenue to right the ship.
We are all in this ship together, rich and poor, old and young, employed and unemployed, men and women, all colors and races, all religions and those not so religious, able and disabled, married and not married, straight and gay, the weak and the powerful. All must contribute. All must sacrifice. Both massive spending cuts and a restoration of revenue are required, including tax increases and reducing tax breaks, especially on those who can best afford it and have benefited the most from our free market economy.
#4. Our huge national debt, while real and threatening is not the coming apocalypse you and others make it out to be. It is easy, though painful to fix with a mix of major but reasonable cost cutting in all areas including both “Entitlements” and “Defense”, tax reform and selectively increased tax rates specifically applied to solve the Medicare and long term social security shortfalls.
#5. If Congress cannot reach consensus on how to achieve a real deficit reduction by August 2, 2011 the government must continue to pay for all already contracted goods and services. Whether spending on those obligations is made using incoming revenues or by creating debt is not the issue. The actual payment of existing legal obligations is the issue. It is the law. I believe the President would be obligated under the Constitution to issue an Executive Order to prevent the government from breaking the law as a result of Congressional failure due to political party gridlock.
#6. Care must be taken to protect and stimulate what is left of our economy. Both spending cuts and tax increases, handled poorly, threaten to damage our already weak economic recovery. So does threatening the good faith and credit of the United States in the global economy.
#7. In 2010, the public voted for change, a change to fix the economy, to create jobs and create a better economic future. Instead many are getting ideology based changes in abortion laws, cutbacks in education, voting barriers and campaigns against rights of labor organizations. These social issues were not advertised as part of the 2010 deal and neither was torpedoing the economy over an already violated debt ceiling. Where are the jobs? Where are the programs to stimulate job growth? Why is Medicare suddenly under immediate attack? Why are we playing Russian Roulette with a debt ceiling? Why is there no vision about fixing the economy, restoring the infrastructure, developing national projects that are bigger than any private business, like the Hoover Dam, the Apollo Project and the interstate highway system, all of which created jobs, enhanced the private economy and made us the great nation that we were? Instead we have elected a sniveling Congress of both Republicans and Democrats, so self-centered and ideologically hamstrung that they are the biggest part of the problem. 2012 cannot come soon enough.
Representative Poe, please wake up. Please see the obvious. Become your own man, not Boehner’s or Cantors. Represent the 2nd District in a way that makes us proud even when we disagree.
A refresher course in Econ 101 would also help.
As you so often say, "And that is just the way it is." However, if you have the guts and so choose, you can help make the changes needed for America to become better rather than worse.
Bruce Olson, BA, Econ 101, MBA Texas, Vietnam Vet 69-70, 30+ years on the private business side of the economy. Proud to be an American. Not so proud of Congress.