Asking the Wrong Question

In a political advertisement that has been running frequently in South Carolina over the last couple of weeks, Mitt Romney is shown addressing fiscal responsibility by proposing the following test for federal programs: "Is this program so critical, so important, that it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?"

My friends, that is not only the wrong question to ask, it is also an incredibly stupid question that flies in the face of what should be considered the bedrock principle of fiscal conservatism. I'm talking about the principle that guided earlier generations of Americans and made America the great country it was. The principle was simply this: If you can't afford to pay for it, don't buy it.

What makes Romney's question both wrong and stupid is it fails to address the problem that got us into our current financial morass. We are in the mess we're in partly because we have borrowed money to give excessive tax cuts to the upper income stratus rather than demanding they pay for the privileges they enjoy in this country. The proper question for Romney to ask, if he is really interested in fiscal responsibility, is this: Is this program so important to our people that it's worth paying for by raising tax revenues. If it is, then raise taxes. Clearly, the notion that lower taxes leads to increased employment has been proven to be utterly false.

Romney is not promising us a solution to our situation. Romney is throwing a shovel to the man trapped in a pit and yelling "Dig deeper, you'll get out eventually!"

2011, The Year Washington Lost

How many times have Republican­­s promised to fix things only to end up making things exponentia­­lly worse? In my lifetime, I remember Nixon being elected on the promise to "right" our nation, only to lead us into a mild recession with a brief recovery before we tumbled into a deeper recession once Ford took over.

Carter presided over a somewhat lackluster recovery before Reagan was elected, promising the moon and the stars and delivering another deep recession and record high unemployme­­nt followed by home interest rates up to 20%, record gas prices and tax policy that substantia­­lly weakened the government­­'s fiscal integrity. (And that's considered the Golden Age by the GOP)

GHW Bush brought us another recession and a war in Iraq, resulting in his defeat by Clinton whose campaign theme was 'It's the economy, stupid!" Clinton brought prosperity and economic expansion, but was derided for his personal foibles, leading to the election of GW Bush who promised to unite us and return us to respect, but brought us two wars, a recession and a depression and the highest level of division internally and disrespect internatio­­nally we have ever known.

We're still trying to get out of the depression that began in late 2007. Obama has had limited success because the GOP, which claims to offer the solution to all that ails us has opposed and diluted every piece of legislatio­­n proposed by the president. But somehow, now, we're supposed to believe THIS time, they'll fix things. Yeah. Right.”
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost