Dear Congress, Please Shut Up and Do Your Job
The debt ceiling crisis in a nutshell:
Congress passed the law that set the debt ceiling.
Congress passed the tax laws that set revenue.
Congress passed all the bills that spend money.
So why is Congress looking around for someone to blame that the tax and spending bills they passed are about to violate the debt ceiling law they passed?
I have a degree in Finance and run my own consulting business, and I am getting really sick of the ignorance that Tea Party Republicans are spouting.
(1) Your Balanced Budget Amendment idea is just plain BAD ECONOMICS. In economic downturns, the government should run at a deficit in order to help turn things around. In good economic times, it should pay down that deficit/run at a surplus. We are in the mess we are in now not because of running at a deficit during a recession but because during the last boom under President Bush we still ran at a deficit. He started two wars while cutting taxes. No other government in the history of the world has ever done that.
(2) “Taxes kill jobs.” “The check is in the mail.” “I did not have sex with that woman.” We have been operating under the Bush tax cuts for the rich for over ten years now, and employment numbers are still pitiful. The middle class isn’t getting a trickle down effect, we are getting peed on. Businesses hire or fire based on profitability. A rational company hires when it can make more profit with the additional help than without it. Whether the tax rate is 10% or 50% doesn’t matter. If I don’t expect the new hire to increase my profits, it doesn’t happen. Doesn’t matter what percentage of those profits I get to keep if there aren’t going to be any.
The thing holding back hiring at this point is uncertainty. There are too many bullies in Congress who are more concerned with making problems for Obama than in solving problems for the country as a whole. I think we should have sent all 537 of you to Gitmo weeks ago with the stipulation that the return flights don’t happen if the country defaults. It is time for all of you to grow up and do your job as a team.
