David Strom, policy fellow, had an opinion piece in the Star Tribune this weekend, “ Republicans Play Hardball Because They See the Light”.

Sadly, not even David Strom can make us smile. There is no humour here unless it is gallows humour. Please read the entire article (here are a few teasers.)

“The crisis is not that we are having a hard time lifting the debt ceiling. The crisis is that we have to raise it by $2.4 trillion just to pay our bills through 2012.”

“The United States is well past the point where we are spending our children’s inheritance; we are now spending their future paychecks to maintain a higher level of government spending than we can afford.”

“Despite the claims that Republican proposals are too draconian, if anything they are too mild. The much-vilified Paul Ryan budget does make what appear to be drastic spending cuts — until you realize that even those cuts don’t get us to a balanced budget until 2063, more than 50 years from now.”

“Far from being too radical, it would merely be a down payment toward the spending reforms necessary to get our fiscal house in order.”

“When the inevitable reckoning comes, the solution will not be so simple as raising the amount of money we can borrow; it will be a crushing austerity that makes the Ryan budget look like a socialist paradise.”

“The bills will come due, sooner rather than later. We can either make modest adjustments to our spending now to soften the blow, or keep living beyond our means until our creditors call in our debts.”

“The Republicans, if anything, need more backbone.”

Tags: debt, debt ceiling, Deficit

This entry was posted on Monday, August 1st, 2011 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Budget, Commentaries, David Strom, Deficit, Freedom, Limited Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.