Washington's selective deficit disorder

[NikolaC]

They blew billions on wars and bailouts, but spending cash that actually helps people seems to bother politicians

By David Sirota

Sept. 19, 2009 | Watching the healthcare debate unfold these days is a little like watching scenes from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- the ones showing a collage of strung-out, deranged or otherwise incapacitated patients rotting away in a squalid psychiatric ward.

As the insurance industry's Nurse Ratched lurks in the background, congressional Democrats cower in the corner, fearing the phantom menace of their own shadows. Standing next to the window, suicidal Republican leaders rant about "death panels" and threaten to splatter their electoral prospects onto the pavement below. Nearby, White House officials struggle with multiple-personality ailments as they mumble contradictory statements about the public option. Meanwhile, tea party protesters lie on the floor in a fetal position, soiling their hospital diapers as they throw incoherent tantrums about everything from socialism to communism to czarism to Nazism. And, not surprisingly, Washington reporters just stare off into the distance, having been long ago lobotomized in the wake of their Watergate heyday.

Clearly, the inmates in America's political sanitarium are each struggling with different maladies. However, they are all suffering from Selective Deficit Disorder -- an illness whose symptoms can be particularly difficult to detect.

When we see tea party activists bemoan deficit spending or watch rank-and-file senators like Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., say, "I'm not going to vote for a bill that's not deficit-neutral," it is easy to think these poor souls are perfectly healthy. When President Obama promises to "not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficit" and then New York Times writers such as David Brooks praise this "dime standard" as the epitome of "pragmatism" and "fiscal sanity," these victims seem absolutely sane.

Read more at Salon.com.

[sam sarrha]

1. the problem is sending our jobs away and being fed foreign crap..unemployed people dont pay taxes,