The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses.
- Juvenal
OK…so now matter how I try to wrap my head around this, I still can’t make it all add up. Of course, I was a History major, so perhaps I’m just too stupid and lacking in intellectual agility to grasp how this addresses the OHMYGODWHATABOUTOURRGRANDCHILDREN!!!! crisis that is our national deficit.
Let me see if I have this straight, though…. We ran the risk of a government shutdown, right up until virtually the last possible moment, over $38 billion in spending cuts (and Republican demands that we defund Planned Parenthood)…and yet extending the Bush tax cuts cost $150 billion? Correct me if I’m wrong here, but even my inner History major can do the math on this one…and no matter how you pencil the numbers out, $38 billion is STILL less than $150 billion. So…uh, is the something I’m missing here…or am I just looking for complexity where greed, incompetence, and arrogance intersect simply?
I’m wondering how it is that any sort of Republican creative accounting can square increasing the deficit by $150 billion…only to risk shutting the government down over $38 billion in spending cuts, all while acting as if it’s about tackling the 800-lb. gorilla that allegedly is the deficit? And it’s not as if Democrats have acquitted themselves gloriously in this struggle, either. Man, grow some balls, already….
I don’t pretend to have all the answers or to understand all the issues, personalities, and the mine-is-bigger-than-yours horsetrading that passes for principled leadership in Washington these days. Still, I do think that I can come to grips with one very basic mathematical reality (hat tip to my 4th grade math teacher, Mr. Solo):
Still, I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something. It can’t be that simple…can it??