David S. Broder: Calling on Congress to stop the debt tsunami

[alp227]

Op-ed from today's Washington Post

The 34 names are familiar to anyone who has followed economic policy in Washington for the past generation, one-third of them former chairmen or members of key committees of Congress, seven of them former directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget, two of them former comptroller generals of the United States, seven of them former directors of the Congressional Budget Office, and one of them -- Paul Volcker -- a former chairman of the Federal Reserve System and now an adviser to President Obama.

Both political parties are well represented in their number. But they came together this week as signatories of a nonpartisan manifesto, essentially a stark warning to the president and Congress and a plea for action on behalf of the next generation.

The United States, they unanimously said, is facing "a debt-driven crisis -- something previously viewed as almost unfathomable in the world's largest economy." Under the impact of the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression, the federal government ran a deficit of $1.4 trillion this past year. The rescue effort was necessary, but in 2009 alone, the public debt grew 31 percent, from $5.8 trillion to $7.6 trillion, rising from 41 percent to 53 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Unless strong remedial steps are taken in the years just ahead, the debt is projected to rise to 85 percent of GDP by 2018 and 100 percent four years later. By that time, barely a dozen years from now, these sober-sided, deeply experienced folks say, the American economy is likely to be in ruins.

Coincidentially, yesterday I was watching the film I.O.U.S.A. during my lunchtime.

[Zen Democrat]

1. And I'm calling on the Washington post to stop David Broder.

Retire this tired Republican jackass. He's always been in love with power, genuflecting at the feet of Henry Kissinger whever given an opportunity. Enough of this old tool, PLEASE!

[lapfog_1]

2. Two points.

1. Where were you and this piece of shit Broder for the last 8+ years of deficit spending by the Repukes, tax cuts and wars???

2. The bus went into the ditch by Corportist Repuke AND Dem rule, deregulating the shit out of the criminal banksters... Now we got to spend money to pull the bus out of the ditch... so NOW you want to stop the tow truck???

[BlueMTexpat]

3. Absolutely spot on!

:applause:

[BlueMTexpat]

4. Unrecommended because David Broder has been completely out to lunch

while *Co added trillions to the deficit with their horrendous policies and either created or allowed the creation of the situations that require the actions that must be taken now.
There is no free lunch. You can't have wars forever, tax cuts for the rich, bailouts for the rich and loopholes for the rich without creating a financially non-sustainable situation. The thing missing for *Co was anything to benefit the majority of US citizens who have either been serving as cannon fodder or deep pockets for all the *Co personal friends and follies. Obama may not be going about things exactly the way that I would like him to, but he is making a sincere effort to redress some of the imbalance ... and also to get us all financially solvent once again. It is a tremendous undertaking. Broder and his ilk, along with all the obstructionist Republicans and Lieberman-like traitors, are literal scabs on the Great Ass of Progress.
Read some history. But for The Great Society programs under FDR, the USA would literally have gone under during the Great Depression. And then, as now, the Republicans and their flunkeys who got us into the messes in the first place howled long and hard about fiscal responsibility after the fact. It took them until Ronald Reagan to begin tearing down the underpinnings of the Great Society in earnest. Our nation has been much the worse since.
Since I am now mid-seventh decade and have seen the literal rise and fall of the US during the past 50 years, I don't even have to read history to know a lot of what I'm talking about. I have lived it.

[Blue Owl]

5. Pffffffffttttt

Little late there, David.