Mitch McConnell wanted you to know he was livid on Thursday. The Senate was about to Greece the wheels for adding yet another trillion and change to President Obama’s yet-again tapped-out credit card. “More spending, more debt,” brayed the minority leader. “That’s what we’ve gotten from this administration.” Well, no, Senator, that’s what we’ve gotten from you.
Yes, I know, Obama is the one driving us off the cliff. But as McConnell and his fellow Republicans are well aware, he couldn’t have filled his tank without them — and they are the guys who got us halfway up the summit before handing the president the car keys. No one is falling for this week’s debt-increase “disapproval” charade, the stage for which was set by last summer’s sleight-of-hand, when Republicans agreed to borrow another $2.4 trillion. As if to prove that Obama has not cornered the market on cynicism, the GOP apparently feels the need to insult your intelligence while it helps our latter-day Robin Hood take from the unborn to give to the insatiable.
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For the record, it was Republicans who nearly doubled the national debt during the Bush years — increasing it by almost $5 trillion. Some context: It had taken the nation over 200 years to accumulate roughly the same amount of debt rung up from 2001 through 2008 — a time during most of which, besides holding the White House, Republicans held the Senate (with McConnell in the leadership, first as whip and later as leader) and the House (with now-speaker John Boehner in the leadership, first as a committee chairman, then as leader).
Of course, for the Left, enough is never enough. So when Obama took over, he made the GOP look positively stingy — running up more debt in half the time, with perennial trillion-dollar deficits projected as far as the eye can see. With debt rising about $4 billion per day and each citizen’s share nearing $50,000, frightened voters opted to give Republicans a second chance, electing them in historic numbers in the 2010 midterms. This was not because they suddenly loved Republicans. They didn’t — and don’t. It was because the GOP was the only available alternative. And it was because leaders such as McConnell and Boehner, affecting a chastened pose, promised that if given the opportunity, they’d slam on the brakes.
Last summer, they had their big chance: Debt hit $14.3 trillion, the statutory ceiling — “ceiling” being Washingtonese for the point at which the money we’ve borrowed to pay the interest on prior loans for ever-expanding government spending no longer covers the tab because of the added interest on the new loans, necessitating more loans, resulting in more interest, triggering more — well, you get the idea. Now in control of the House and with near parity in the Senate, Republicans were in a position to stop the madness: to decline to authorize more borrowing and thus force spending cuts.
Instead, they did what they always do: They caved. They shriveled in the heat of Obamedia scaremongering about a purportedly imminent sovereign-debt default that would shred the full faith and credit of the United States. It was bogus. As McConnell and Boehner knew, the debt ceiling was scraped only because the total government spending they annually authorize now outstrips revenues by well over a trillion dollars. There was no credible threat of default because revenues remain vastly higher than what it costs to service the government’s bonds. The real threat — the threat too terrible to contemplate — was that our elected representatives might be forced to make hard, accountable decisions about what spending would need to be cut in order to live within their $14.3 trillion limit (i.e., a ceiling about three times as high as what Leviathan cost us in the mid-Nineties, when President Clinton pronounced the era of Big Government over).
I disagree, the dems don't lie to your face when they tax, borrow and spend. Republicans talk for hours on how they will control spending, stand firm on the deficit and balance the budget. But they never do it.
Now follow this rant up with an article on how Ron Paul's platform would begin the process of renewal and your on to something. Otherwise, you are part of the problem, not the solution. The sad thing is, you know it!
Mr McCarthy, I have said it before, you are a national treasure. You have eviscerated the obfuscating legislators who are more than gleeful to spend what no longer exists--national wealth, now the equivalent of the printing press.
Philoctetes, you said it much better than I was going to. Andrew McCarthy is the main reason I keep coming back to NRO. Personally, I am sick and tired of most of the commentators repeatedly bashing one candidate in favor of the one who lost to the one who lost to Barry.
Thank you Mr. McCarthy for all your extremely well written and insightful articles. I always feel more educated after reading your work.
"So remind me what we need them for?" Ummm. The delusion of choice? A larger and more compassionate EPA?
I've been feeling that none of the possible elections of a President - based on their absence of merit in the area of concern - would ensure spending/deficit reduction and that "2/3rds of government" would be necessary. To believe that it will happen is more a faith-based initiative than the Ground Zero Mosque. A single mustard seed - when the GOP recreates the 2010 narrative in its own name - and wins.
When the pols chose Boehner for Speaker, a gentleman to be sure but clearly never up to the task at hand, the die was already cast for capitulation to the statists. Michele Bachmann or Steve King would be better qualified to simply say.......... no. Paul Ryan is good as budget chairman because he has the unique ability to make the green eyeshades minutiae sound compelling.
Mr. McCarthy, have you ever considered getting in the presidential race? I hope Jim Jordan or King or Bachmann will rise up and challenge Boehner for the Speakership assuming the GOP holds the house.
This is all in a line with Mr Obama's plans for America, that is, to reduce it from greatness to socialist poverty. And it's working. He's deliberately ruining us, with the dim-witted assistance of our Republican elite.
We don't need Romney, or Gingrich, or Palin or Huckabee, as the Republican nominee to fix this. We need a million, two million Americans, angrily massing in the National Mall, shutting down Washington, demanding Obama's ouster, doing all that they can to get him to step down. Mssrs McConnell and Boehner would undoubtedly take notice of such a demonstration.
It worked in Egypt. It worked in Tunisia. It can work here.
The doctor has the right prescription... Then we put them all on (Dems, GOP, media talking heads, etc) on a boat. I suggest we then hire Capt. Francesco Schettino to haul them out to sea.
"We need a million, two million Americans, angrily massing in the National Mall, shutting down Washington, demanding Obama's ouster, doing all that they can to get him to step down. Mssrs McConnell and Boehner would undoubtedly take notice of such a demonstration"
I would take an exeption to it- demanding the McConnell and Boehner and few others just as despicable part of the establishment to Join in Obama's ouster!
And that is our only hope in saving our country.
"We need a million, two million Americans, angrily massing in the National Mall, shutting down Washington, demanding Obama's ouster, doing all that they can to get him to step down. Mssrs McConnell and Boehner would undoubtedly take notice of such a demonstration."
I would only take an exception to this action and include not only Mssrd McConnell , Boehner but few others equally despicable from elite establishment in the ouster.
No, they will never take notice- they have to be ousted for good for future generation of future power brokers to take notice!
"We need a million, two million Americans, angrily massing in the National Mall, shutting down Washington, demanding Obama's ouster, doing all that they can to get him to step down. Mssrs McConnell and Boehner would undoubtedly take notice of such a demonstration."
I would only take an exception to this action and include not only Mssrd McConnell , Boehner but few others equally despicable from elite establishment in the ouster.
No, they will never take notice- they have to be ousted for good for future generation of future power brokers to take notice!
I, also, like the Doctor's prescription. It can be our version of the Occupy movement. Except we should stay until Boehner and McConnell get some backbone and shut this government's preoccupation with deficit spending down!
Thank you for saying what needs to be shouted from the rooftops.
Congress had the power to cut spending but didn't. A new president can help. Only one of the Republican candidates is serious about ending the profligate spending. Unfortunately he's wrong on the Mideast. Which is more important in the next four years?
Thank you, Andrew McCarthy. You are serving your nation well.
For my part, during the struggle on the debt limit, I was here everyday on the Corner, arguing against the rubbish that the Republicans couldn't stand firm. Nothing used to get under my skin more than the claim that the Republicans only controlled half of a third of government. I so hate being associated with such a spineless political party.
And now where are we? We're being told our only hope is to nominate a squish like Mitt Romney. Oh yeah. He's the guy who'll stand up to the Democrats.
