An Honest Republican Talks About The Debt

There is no doubt that our national debt is currently very large -- much larger than any of us would like for it to be. The current Republicans in Congress want Americans to believe that the reason for this huge debt is the spending of Democrats (even though the Bush administration took a budget surplus left by his predecessor and turned it into a huge deficit, driving up the debt). The GOP now tells Americans that this debt must be handled only through budget cuts without raising taxes, because the tax burden on the rich is already too high.

This is all nonsense, of course. I think anyone who is honest would have to admit that while some cuts are needed, the government also needs more revenue (and at the very least the Bush tax cuts for the rich need to be eliminated). The following article from the Los Angeles Times backs this up, and amazingly enough, it was written by a Republican -- Mike Lofgren, who retired as a Republican congressional staffer on June 17th. If there were more Republicans this honest (and more Democrats with a backbone), the deficit and the national debt could be controlled without hurting regular Americans. Here is what Lofgren says:

The failure of our leaders to offer realistic budget proposals was a major reason I decided to retire after 28 years in Congress, most of them as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees. My party talks a good game, railing about the immorality of passing debt on to our children. But the same Congressional Budget Office that punctured Obama's budget also concluded that the major policies that swung the budget from a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion in 2001 to the present 10-year deficit of $6.2 trillion were Republican in origin.

Consider the two signature GOP policies of George W. Bush's presidency: the wars and the tax cuts. Including debt service costs, Bush's wars have cost about $1.7 trillion to date. Additionally, as part of being "a nation at war," the Pentagon has spent about $1 trillion more than was expected in the last decade on things other than direct war costs, which has been a bonanza for military contractors but a disaster for the federal budget. And finally, there has been another trillion dollars spent domestically in response to 9/11, including spending on such things as establishing the Homeland Security Department and increasing the budgets for the State Department and the Veterans Administration.

The Bush tax cuts have added another $3 trillion in red ink. While Republican leaders wail that Americans — particularly their rich contributors — are overtaxed, the facts say otherwise: U.S. taxpayers, particularly the wealthiest, pay far less in taxes than they would in most other developed countries. Today, the 400 wealthiest Americans have as much wealth as the bottom 125 million. The GOP insists that those wealthy people use their money to create jobs, and that taxing them more heavily would ultimately hurt the economy. But, if that's so, why was the rate of job creation in the decade after the Bush tax cuts the poorest in any decade since before World War II?

Like a drunk swearing off hooch for the hundredth time, Republicans are now trying to show they are serious about controlling the deficit by saying they won't raise the debt ceiling unless they get through some of their cost-saving projects, like privatizing Medicare. Meanwhile, they want revenue increases "off the table," even though, at 14.8% of GDP, revenues are at their lowest level in 60 years. And the budget passed by the Republican-controlled House further cuts taxes on the wealthy, a fact it glosses over with optimistic growth forecasts.

Raising the debt ceiling isn't, as the GOP tries to say, Congress giving itself permission to continue excessive spending: It's something that's necessary to pay for past congressional decisions on taxes and spending, and those decisions were made primarily when Republicans were in charge.

Democrats should not be let completely off the hook. They rolled over and gave in to the Bush administration far too many times (and even voted to extend the Bush tax cuts after Obama took office). It's time for both parties to wake up and do what's necessary to fix both the economy and the national debt. What can be cut without hurting Americans already hurting from the recession should be cut, and revenues should be raised (especially by taxing the rich and corporations more, because they are currently making record incomes and profits).