When It Comes To Debt, Punish the Hostages

This goes right along with an ongoing conversation we've been having here on The Fold, and one I assume will play large in the election- debts and deficits.

The argument seems to have a few different strands. One is Republicans deny any responsibility for today's massive budget deficits and think everything was fine until 2009 (i.e., inheritance is meaningless). Or they acknowledge some guilt in driving up the deficit but think it all should be fixed by now and would be if Obama would quit with his massive spending binges and start CUTTING. Their third route is a combination of the two but with a slightly more optic edge that thinks we can somehow cut taxes even more for the wealthy, then cut spending on social programs and raise spending on defense by another trillion dollars and come out with a balanced budget.

The facts of the matter are simple.  The budget mess we have currently didn't happen over night.  It is a result of almost a full decade of misplaced fiscal responsibility.  It's also a result of a near full decade of chronic budget deficits brought about by tax cuts that were not offset, very expensive policies that were not paid for and a massive economic downturn not seen since the 1930s.  That's a lethal combination for any economy.  It is what happened, however.  And pretending like we can get out of this in a short period of time is crazy.

I really do love TPM's graphs!!

But certainly what we don't need right now is finger pointing.  Because if we do that we see the people who are crying the loudest right now about spending and debt are the very ones who share the biggest burden of blame for the situation in the first place.  No sense in doing that. It's better we don't blame the hostage takers.  Makes more sense to punish the hostages.