I've got an idea for a wedge issue for the Democrats to use this fall, one that touches on national security and the deficit and dramatically exposes the myths of Republican "strengths" in those areas.
Interested? Keep reading.
As we all know, George W. Bush has turned record surpluses into record deficits. Those record deficits are being covered by the selling of government bonds.
Now, many of those bonds are being bought by China -- correction, not just China, but Communist China to keep their exports to this country cheap, and I'll let the folks with the green eyeshades explain the hows of it in further detail. (Yeah, I know, China's only communist in name now, but fascist in practice. So what? If Bush can say "What's the difference?", so can we.)
What I want to know is: How much of our debt is currently being held by Communist China? Then my next question is: What are our debt service payments on that amount? Maybe it's not as easy as looking up the 1954 National League batting champion, but we should be able to come up with a pretty good estimate one way or another.
Then break it down taxpayer by taxpayer. Tell Joe Six-Pack that thanks to the Bush Administration, he's paying X amount of his tax dollars to subsidize Communist China. Whatever X is, that figure needs to be a household figure this fall. It needs to be on every talking head show, discussed and dissected by every pundit and repeated to the point where Letterman and Leno are making jokes about it and maybe even SNL tries to do a skit about it. Because the more it's out there, the better it is for Democrats and the worse it is for the Republicans whose irresponsibility put us in this position.
Now, that's not something that the Democratic candidates at the top of the ticket should do, for obvious reasons. But every Democrat running for Congress and the Senate should be hammering this point home and exposing the myth of Republicans being fiscally strong and strong on national security. And if they're hammering Republicans on this issue, that's only going to make things easier for the top of the ticket.
"Thanks to Congressman Veeblefetzer's support of President Bush, you are now paying X amounts of tax dollars each year to subsidize Communist China." And when you use that in an ad, make sure to use the clip of the guy in front of the tanks when you say "Communist China."
