Monday, November 1, 2010

America's Deficit: Who's To Blame?

The Republican Party and their candidates are shamelessly talking about America's national debt as if it were the Democratic presidents who caused it. The record is clear about the contributions of American Presidents to the increases in the federal deficit in the last thirty years. This record clearly shows  that Republican Presidents are responsible for the bulk of the deficits. What this proves is that, despite what they will lead you to believe, Republicans are less fiscally responsible than the Democrats.

Today, the Republicans are shouting it to the high heavens about how fiscally responsible they are but the numbers simply does not agree with them. The wax strongly poetic about the Reagan era and how great a President he was and try to convince you that his presidency was the best in American history. Sadly, for them, the numbers, once more, disagrees with them. This is because under Reagan, our national debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased 29.6%.

The two Bush Presidents contributed a combined 42.1% to our debt to GDP problems while the only Democratic President that had enough time to deal with the economy lowered it by 9.7%. That President was Bill Clinton under who's presidency America and Americans enjoyed a sustained period of growth and prosperity.

Incredibly, the George W. Bush administration's deregulation of the banking industry which resulted in the financial crisis and the two unpaid for wars never get a mention as Republicans lie through their noses in an effort to blame the Democratic Party and President Obama for the current economic woes. Neither do they mention  the unpaid for Bush tax cuts which will have contributed $1.8 trillion to the deficit by the time it expires later this year.

To solve any difficult problems, you have to, first of all, find out how you got there but the Republican Party's lies are confusing a frightened America about how we got into this mess. The lies, unfortunately, represent the interests of the richest one to two percent of Americans who are afraid that the government, if it remains in the hands  of the people, might tax them a little more. They are afraid that a government in the hands of the people might stop their outsourcing of American jobs to slave laborers in Asia and around the world.

The rich one to two percent are afraid that a true democracy might actually force them to do business the right way by putting regulations in place to get them to do things; from providing a safer working environment to making sure that American jobs are not shipped overseas, so that corporations can make more obscene profits. That's why they're fighting, tooth and nail, through their representatives, the Republican Party, to convince Americans, through lies, to vote against their own interests.

Obviously, President Obama and the Democrats are in a very difficult position. The jobs are not being created fast enough. That's not surprising given that America has been turned into a consumer society with everything we use in this country being made somewhere else. This is so that the corporations, our corporations can make more profit by paying people elsewhere much less than they'd pay here if Americans did the jobs. Even with that, it must be noted that the President and the Democrats have still created more private sector jobs in the past two years than the Bush administration did in the eight years they were in office.

In addition to us being a consumer society, we can only apply a 25% tax on all Chinese imports or we will face the wrath of American corporations who have had a taste of slave wages in Asia and discovered how much it increases their profits here in America. The slave trade was stopped hundreds of years ago but today, it's alive and thriving around the world and we don't care because we get cheap goods as a result. These corporations have gone as far as influencing a major United States Supreme Court ruling which has allowed them to literally buy this country.

The Citizens United ruling recognizes corporations as individuals thereby giving them the same rights the individual has to contribute to electoral campaigns without taking responsibility. What this means is what we have seen during this election campaign period  where an organization like the American Chamber of Commerce has taken over the air waves with ads upon ads funded by money from corporations, some of which are suspected to be foreign. Because of the Supreme Court ruling, Americans will never be able to know where the influence playing such a controlling part in electing their leaders are coming from.

All the ads by the Chamber, which has become the rallying point of the corporations trying to buy America, claim that reducing the deficit, fiscal responsibility and job creation are all that matter. What they fail to point out is the fact that they have supported outsourcing, for over 30 years, which has sent millions of American jobs overseas. They fail to tell you that they have facilitated the free trade agreements that have made this sort of outsourcing possible. They fail to tell you that they have been highly against all effort to try and renegotiate these free trade agreements with countries that ignore the rules put in place to govern trade between nations.

No, they'll not let you know all this because then you might actually realize that they are the enemy and not you who are the victim. They will try their best to deceive and confuse you so you will blame yourself and the government you elected for the problems they caused. That way, you will go to the polls and cast a vote against yourself by bringing their minnows, the Republican Party, back to power to continue from where they left off. Should we let that happen?

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