Problem Is Debt Itself, Not Ceiling

The United States will default on the interest payment for its $14.5 trillion debt, no Social Security checks will be mailed out, we will stop paying our soldiers, Americans will start dying in droves because there will be no money for Medicare and Medicaid, our bond rating will be downgraded, and interest rates will soar. 

And it’s all the fault of the Tea Party.

You will find that none of those things happened and, of course, it will be the president and the rest of the liberals in Congress who saved the day. 

This is what we have been hearing in the mainstream media for the past several months. They have been reporting all the threats and fear mongering originating in the White House and the liberal Senate. 

It sounds like warmed-over 2011 Cobb County SPLOST propaganda, and it’s been so effective that even some in the Republican establishment are starting to believe it. 

The truth is, federal revenues come in at a rate of approximately $200 billion each month—which is more than enough to pay the interest on our debt, pay our soldiers and write those entitlement checks.

So what if we have to shut down a few national parks temporarily?

Thank God for the 87 so-called Tea Party representatives in the House who see this for what it is: a cynical ploy to give the president the ability to waste more of our national treasure on vote-buying for his 2012 reelection bid. 

Those 87 stalwarts know that the problem is not with the debt ceiling, but the debt itself. 

Currently our country is drowning in debt, and the president and the liberals in Congress want to add to it—but they can’t because of the debt ceiling. They want to raise the ceiling to $16 trillion, and they say that will carry them until after the 2012 election. 

That means they are going to borrow another $1.5 trillion in less than 16 months. Our debt is already so out of control that nearly half of the increase will be needed just to pay the interest on the current debt. Adding to America’s currently unsustainable debt burden is the very definition of insanity.

There have been no less than four plans put forth by the House of Representatives but none by the president or any of the other liberals.  Harry Reid won’t even bring the proffered plans to the floor of the Senate so they can be debated in public. 

The liberals in the Senate have stonewalled every plan that’s been offered, and Harry Reid has deemed them “dead on arrival” even before he has read them. He and the president won’t consider any plan that doesn’t include tax increases on job creators. That’s just what we don’t need as we teeter on the brink of a double-dip recession.

But who gets blamed? It’s the Tea Party conservatives, those who are putting everything on the line to save this country and proving once again that no good deed ever goes unpunished.

The Tea Party conservatives want to cut spending to the bone, and that includes finding waste in all departments, including defense.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid must be reformed. We’ve got to slaughter the sacred cows and get our beloved country back on sound financial footing. Otherwise we’ll all be in foreclosure, and we may not like our new landlords.  

To paraphrase James Carville: It’s not the debt ceiling; it’s the debt stupid.

Tom Maloy, a retired businessman and 30-year Powder Springs resident, is a board member of the Georgia Tea Party. Contact him at tom@thegeorgiateaparty.org.