FORMER AIDE TO REAGAN DENOUNCES HOUSE REPUBLICANS AS "CRAVEN COWARDS"
27 July 2011 :: The Editors Bruce Bartlett, former deputy budget director for Pres. George H.W. Bush and aide to Pres. Reagan, says the Bush tax cuts have added at least $3 trillion to the debt, and other Bush policies led to an increase of $4 trillion in the debt.
When Bush took office, budget projections showed a $6 trillion surplus, enough to pay off the then pending $6 trillion national debt. Instead, by the time Bush left office, the national debt had ballooned to $13 trillion. Obama, he said, has only added about $1.4 trillion to the national debt, and all of that was either already projected or related to economic recovery.
Thus afternoon, he told Chris Matthews that the truth about Barack Obama’s budget policies to date is that “he is a moderate conservative”, not a liberal and certainly not a “socialist” as his critics allege. So much so, he added, that if he were a liberal Democrat, he would be very annoyed by Obama’s committed centrism.m
He expressed concern that nothing can get through the House of Representatives. He even went as far as to say that a good number of the Republicans in the House are “either stupid, ignorant or craven cowards”, and that he doubts they have the courage or the wisdom to act in service of their country.
Budget deficits have appeared to widen more than actual spending has, under Obama, because in order to impose fiscal discipline, and prevent wasteful spending on wars and unfunded programs, he move Bush’s off-the-books wars back onto the federal budget. The result has been the most substantive and far-ranging efforts the nation has seen to roll back the widening flood of long-term national debt.
Bartlett’s warning was concise, clear and deliberate: the Republicans are refusing to take responsibility for having driven the borrowing binge that put the nation in the hole it is now in. Had George W. Bush not slashed taxes, without any plan to pay for the revenue reductions, twice, the existing budget surplus would have paid down the debt.
He then added still more by entering into two multi-trillion-dollar wars, with zero funding, and a Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, also with zero funding, then setting in motion the most extensive burst of new borrowing in US history, to fund the bank bailouts.
Republican House speaker John Boehner has a choice that amounts to deciding where the weight of history will fall: he can lead a non-partisan effort to stave off a credit downgrade, and the massive ensuing costs of higher interest rates, which will drain both the people and their government of future revenues, or he can side with the radicals in his party who openly celebrate their quest to violate the Constitution and drive the government into default.
He can choose to be a leader of courage and principle, or to follow the radical freshmen already calling for his ouster. |
