Where were all of these deficit hawks during the 8 years Bush blew through an inherited budget surplus & exploded the national debt in giveaways to war contractors & Cheney's oil buddies?
Are they offended that now, in a liquidity trap, when monetary policy can't inflate demand (because interest rates are already near zero) when deficit spending is NECESSARY to match the gap in demand, that we choose to use that dubious opportunity to create or enhance social programs that raise the tide for all of us?
Does running a deficit only bother them if we choose to spend money on badly needed infrastructure projects & support for bankrupt states that cannot run in the red, or that we're preventing massive layoffs of teachers, cops, & firefighters?
Where the f**k were you, and why are you crying now?
Why ignore unfunded tax giveaways to the wealthiest but raise hell when Democrats create an energy policy that not only rewards those companies that innovate new green methods & technologies but is a good first step toward fighting the climate crisis that is looming larger every second we don't act?
And why the incredible resistance to reforming an overwhelmingly broken healthcare system, where the only viable path to really reducing costs & ensuring that all Americans, regardless of class, have access to the same lifesaving & illness prevention services is a strong, competative public option, one that operates in a healthcare insurance exchange that ensures choice & savings? It's especially illogical because every reform proposal on the table pays for itself, through the premiums it will ask from those who can afford to pay & the savings it MUST incur to be signed by the President. The only additional burden to the debt will be the start-up costs, and that will pay for itself in the overall savings it will incur over time.
And why should Medicare be burdened with the all of the sickest & most expensive patients while private insurance companies reap the benefits & the profits from the cheapest customers, namely the healthy & the young? Why do they get to pick & choose who they will cover & leave the most expensive patients to we the people? Why don't we the people get the savings of covering & receiving the premiums from healthy people?
Why do buzzwords like "socialized medicine" & "rationing" & even "choice" remove any chance at reasonable discourse? Our healthcare is already rationed by bureaucrats in cublicles a thousand miles away who decide what services they will cover, what medicines we can buy, sometimes whether we live or die.
And we already have "socialized medicine" in this country, in fact, over 60% of the healthcare dollars spent in this country are "socialized" It's called Medicare, and those who have it, love it.
And who beside the wealthy have any "choice" in what kind of healthcare they receive, now? If you're poor, your only choice is to not get sick. If you're lucky enough to be covered at work, you have the "choice" of whatever insurance your employer tells you, and if it isn't sufficient or they change providors or if they drop coverage altogether, you have no "choice" in the matter. A real public option, operating in a real competative exchange, offers the first real "choice" most of us have ever had. A public plan ensures EVERYONE access to healthcare, to preventative care, and the word "pre-existing condition" disappears from our uniquely American lexicon.
Where were all of these deficit hawks? Right here among us all along, gleefully ignoring their so-called fiscal conservatism as long as it was a white Republican doing the spending, as long as the money was spent on blowing shit up & maybe killing a few brown people in the process. Cheerleading the deregulation of our markets & looking the other way in a fevered belief that free markets can do no wrong, that white Wall Street bankers have their & the country's best interests at heart, & that greed only happens with lazy minorites sucking on the teat of their tax dollars. Border fences & tax cuts are fine, but getting the working poor a regular check-up at the doctor is "socialism".
Kiss my ass.