Accusations - But No Solutions

I tried to watch the Republican presidential debate Monday night -- I really did. But all they did was make me angry. They all wanted to blame the current recession on President Obama without acknowledging in any way the major part the Republicans played in destroying the economy. They want to forget that the recession started and millions of jobs were lost before Bush ever left office.

They also want to ignore the obstructions by their own party to anything President Obama has tried to do to fix the economy. Has the president done enough to fix the economy? No. But a large part of the blame for that has to rest with the party of NO -- the congressional Republicans who have done nothing but throw up roadblocks and make accusations since President Obama took office.

Even more infuriating is the fact that they have no solutions. The two biggest problems this country has is the faltering economy and the lack of job creation. How are they going to "fix" those? By returning to the same old "trickle-down" economic policy -- keep giving more and more money to the richest people (through unneeded tax cuts) in the hope that someday they will share that wealth with the rest of America.

The fact that this policy has never worked doesn't seem to have penetrated their feeble minds. This is the same policy that created a vast wealth and income gap and led to the Great Depression. And when they went back to it in these times, it again created a vast and growing gap in wealth and income and led to the current recession (which is still in danger of leading to a depression, if it hasn't already).

The only difference in their previous two attempts at a "trickle-down" economic policy and their current desire to do it again, is that now they want to couple the giveaways to the rich with takeaways from everyone else (Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, WIC, family planning, unemployment insurance). In other words, they've added a new level of meanness to their madness.

And they're doing it in the name of cutting the deficit. They want to contract the economy in the middle of a recession (when they should be expanding it) -- a move guaranteed to lose more jobs and worsen the economic problems of Main Street. I'd like to think they're just doing it to keep the economy down so they can win the 2012 election, and then they would institute new policies to actually fix the economy. But I don't believe that's true. I think they're dumb enough to still believe their giveaways to the rich will fix the economy.

This country is in a lot of trouble. The Democrats are too timid to do what is necessary, but the Republicans are worse. They seem determined to destroy this country, because they refuse to learn from history.