I get it that everyone is hurting.  I get it that people’s houses are dropping in value.  I get that people are frightened that they will lose their job or they already have.  I get that people are living in near despair.  I get that people are not happy that the current administration has not turned this around.  What I do not get is why would anyone think that the Republicans, much less their Tea Party cohorts, will solve the problem when it was the policies of the Republicans that got us into this mess.

If you think it is bad now, just wait until the Republicans gain a greater footing in Congress.  Everyone says that the Democrats hold a majority and have done nothing.  Both of those statements are false.  The Democrats hold 60 seats in the Senate, however, 12 of those seats are held by “Blue Dog Democrats” who are Republicans in Democratic clothing.  They call themselves Democrats but vote straight Republican.

The Republicans are blaming the Democrats for irresponsible spending and creating more deficit.  Creating more debt?  Absolutely.  Spending irresponsibly?  No.  The war that Bush started turned the Clinton Surplus budget into trillions of dollars of deficit.  Hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars were heaped on the Military/Industrial Complex, MIC, every year of the Bush administration and not one Republican complained.  This, were it not for the Chinese, would have bankrupted this country without doing anything to improve anything this country needs—mainly education, healthcare, and other quality of life items.

At the same time the Bush Administration was granting the MIC unlimited access to our tax dollars, the Republicans were reducing the tax liability of the super rich—the only people who were making money in this economy.  They got even richer and, of course, we got poorer.  These are the folks that voters are preparing to return to power.

Please let me explain how Democratic and Republican policies differ, if it is not already obvious.  When the Democrats spend money on stimulus, that money comes to us.  We, who have not so very much.  As a result, we spend it. And the people we give it to then hire more people who then spend it and the economy gets going again.  Why didn’t it work? Well, it started to work.  The problem was that the stimulus was not big enough to dig us out of the hole the Republicans created.  We MUST spend more to get the economy going.  The increases in income will, in turn, reduce the deficit by increasing the income of the middle class.  You don’t have any $$$ because the top 2% have it all and they are not spending  it.

To vote the Republicans back in will doom the little positive steps that we have taken and plunge us back into an economic void from which we will never recover.

September 11, 2010  
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