People wave signs at a tea party protest. | Reuters Photo
First, I want to tell everyone that I have been nursing a nerve injury in my left hand. It has caused me to not want to type much as there was no telling which keys my fingers would hit. The numbness is subsiding some and I am able to work the fingers again. I’m back, somewhat.
The tea partiers rant and rave about the national debt, but fail to remember just how it got to where it is today. This is from an article back in July from Politico:
Sixty-one percent of the 697 self-identified tea party supporters surveyed identified the federal debt as one of the “extremely serious threats” to the future well-being of the United States.
They blame Obama, of course, but here’s the real reason our national debt is out of hand:
There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn’t include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.
As a result of two costly wars funded by debt, our fiscal house was in dismal shape even before the financial crisis — and those fiscal woes compounded the downturn.
Where were these pasty old white men with their “big government” rhetoric in 2003?
I got an email today heralding the passing of financial reform. I have often spoke of the tremndous job Obama has done in a very short time, and this snippet says it all.
Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com wrote:
Tom, we won
From: Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com [info@barackobama.com] Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2010 1:37 PM To: Tom Subject: Tom, we won …The Recovery Act, health reform, and now Wall Street reform, on top of everything else. In a year and a half, this administration has made bigger, bolder progress than any president’s in decades.
The search for a legislative way forward on energy will continue Tuesday when Democrats reconvene to strategize ahead of a Wednesday energy meeting at the White House. Presenters from last Thursday’s Democratic caucus meeting, including Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) who laid out her CLEAR Act in a well-conceived video, will field questions from colleagues. Cantwell’s video, presented at a caucus meeting to decide what direction to take on energy legislation, describes the energy bill she is sponsoring with Susan Collins (R-Me.).
The CLEAR Act would spur green energy investment while avoiding regional disparities, according to a new study by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. The legislation would cap national greenhouse gas emissions, auctioning off all allowances for emissions and then refunding 75 percent of federal revenues to taxpayers, using the other 25 percent to invest in green technologies.
I had high hopes for the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham climate change bill, but Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the coward, decided that it was just way too liberal and took his ball and went home crying all the way about faulty climate science when everyone knows that big oil hired scientists to diss the real science and muddy the once clear waters of global warming truth. My heart sunk when the effort collapsed without GOP support. But the guys on the hill have to realize that any progressive measure will collapse if it depends on any GOP support at all to pass.
Now that my favorite Senator, Maria Cantwell (D-WA) has introduced legislation that would get the job done without cap-and-trade which was a faulty idea to begin with, my hopes are soaring again that we will begin to take real steps toward a clean energy future, instead of just giving it lip service like we have done for the past four decades. Cantwell’s plan limits carbon emissions. Cap-and-trade did not, and allowed big polluters to pay to keep on polluting.
New approaches are needed to ensure China’s technology ambitions don’t erode U.S. competitiveness in clean energy. by Melanie Hart The U.S. Department of Commerce next month is expected to issue a critical ruling on one of the biggest trade cases to hit the U.S.-China energy relationship in recent years. Seven U.S. solar companies claim that […]
As ThinkProgress previously reported, GOP presidential frontrunners Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, along with Speaker John Boehner, all incorrectly believe that the First Amendment permits the Catholic Church to immunize itself from a law simply because they have a religious disagreement with it. This isn’t just wrong and contrary to Supreme Court precedent, […]
A study released by the Guttmacher Institute shows that teen pregnancy has reached it’s lowest level in nearly 40 years. According to “U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions, 2008: National Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity,” researchers found that in 2008 there were 67.8 pregnancies for every 1,000 women ages 15 to 19, signaling a […]
Muslim-influenced fantasy can take us everywhere from re-imagined versions of Al Andalus to Mars. And this week, Matt Ruff arrives with a new novel, The Mirage, that takes us somewhere else entirely: a world where the United Arab States is the dominant superpower, the state of Israel is located in Central Europe, and a devastating […]
Addressing a crowd of 1,500 Oklahoma voters, Santorum said, “You hear all the time, the left — ‘Oh, the conservatives are the anti-science party. No we’re not. We’re the truth party.” Santorum went on to say anti-fracking activism is a “reign of environmental terror” and discussed the myth of global warming science. Watch Santorum defend […]
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The Real Reason the National Debt is So High
People wave signs at a tea party protest. | Reuters Photo
First, I want to tell everyone that I have been nursing a nerve injury in my left hand. It has caused me to not want to type much as there was no telling which keys my fingers would hit. The numbness is subsiding some and I am able to work the fingers again. I’m back, somewhat.
The tea partiers rant and rave about the national debt, but fail to remember just how it got to where it is today. This is from an article back in July from Politico:
They blame Obama, of course, but here’s the real reason our national debt is out of hand:
Re: The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond
Where were these pasty old white men with their “big government” rhetoric in 2003?