The AP reported last week that the US national debt is growing at a sickening rate of a million dollars a minute.
In 1981, addressing a joint session of congress, Ronald Reagan said this of the comparatively tiny national debt:
Think of how much just one of these bills could do. It could make sure that an immigrant single mom working for minimum wage could afford to feed her kid for a year. It could go to research and development for alternative energies. It could go to raising the insufficient salaries of teachers and police officers and firefighters, public servants who keep the country working. It could get medical care for kids like ones I knew who had asthma and no medication, collapsing in the schoolyard during recess. We could even really support our troops and give them a raise.
No can do, say the Republicans. Let's block funding for SCHIP, the program which insures millions of poor kids around the country. Let's block the energy bill that would have boosted funding to alternative energies. Let's block damages to rescue workers who got cancer from breathing the toxic smoke on 9/11. We can't do that. It costs too much, but wait...let's spend another 600 billion in Iran.
The Republicans are the Don't-Tax-But-Spend-Anyway party. The problem: they're not spending their own money. They're spending other people's money, and then leaving the problem to the Democrats.
Then I'm supposed to bail them out. Me and the kid whose health insurance they cut funding for. And our kids.
In 1981, addressing a joint session of congress, Ronald Reagan said this of the comparatively tiny national debt:
Can we, who man the ship of state, deny it is somewhat out of control? Our national debt is approaching $1 trillion. A few weeks ago I called such a figure, a trillion dollars, incomprehensible, and I've been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you'd be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high.Despite his convincing statistics, Reagan went on to nearly triple the debt, to 2.9 trillion. Now we are facing the possibility of a ten trillion dollar debt by the time Bush finally leaves office, roughly the distance between Jacksonville Florida and Washington DC in stacked thousand dollar bills.
Think of how much just one of these bills could do. It could make sure that an immigrant single mom working for minimum wage could afford to feed her kid for a year. It could go to research and development for alternative energies. It could go to raising the insufficient salaries of teachers and police officers and firefighters, public servants who keep the country working. It could get medical care for kids like ones I knew who had asthma and no medication, collapsing in the schoolyard during recess. We could even really support our troops and give them a raise.
No can do, say the Republicans. Let's block funding for SCHIP, the program which insures millions of poor kids around the country. Let's block the energy bill that would have boosted funding to alternative energies. Let's block damages to rescue workers who got cancer from breathing the toxic smoke on 9/11. We can't do that. It costs too much, but wait...let's spend another 600 billion in Iran.
The Republicans are the Don't-Tax-But-Spend-Anyway party. The problem: they're not spending their own money. They're spending other people's money, and then leaving the problem to the Democrats.
Then I'm supposed to bail them out. Me and the kid whose health insurance they cut funding for. And our kids.
2 comments:
God, what those thousand dollar bills could do... only if a thousand dollar bill existed.
It does. The government uses it.
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