House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took to the podium today and laid out, in no uncertain terms, the Republican's true motives for playing chicken with the debt ceiling. Motives which most of the American people are unable to connect the dots to because they do not have the time or the information necessary to do so.
"This isn't just about them saying we should reduce the deficit," she said, adding: "This is an excuse. The budget deficit is an excuse for the Republicans to undermine government plain and simple. They don't just want to make cuts, they want to destroy. They want to destroy food safety, clean air, clean water, the department of education. They want to destroy your rights." [...]
"We all want to be fiscally sound," she said. "We don't want to do harm to our economic growth but we know that if we can save some money, we'd like to do that."
"They do not like the government," Pelosi said. "They're riding an engine of popular support for, ok we have to reduce the deficit. And they're using that to destroy."
"The Speaker has said that between him and the president they have a different vision of America and that's how come their budget proposals are different," she sad. "Quite different...We get the sacrifice, they get the wealth."
I would just expand on Pelosi's comments and add that this latest round of Republican brinkmanship and hostage taking has very little to do with the deficit, the national debt, or even finance in general. It has everything to do with the social agenda of the radical Right.
The debt-ceiling, and thus the full faith and credit of the United States, is simply the vehicle which they are currently using as a scorched-earth bargaining chip to accomplish their long-standing goal of eliminating what remains of The New Deal. President Obama hinted at this last night during his speech, and Nancy Pelosi is stating it fairly clearly today.
President Obama and our thin majority in the Senate are the only things preventing the Republicans from achieving their goals, so you had better damn well show them some support and a little solidarity.
We must remove from office as many Republicans as we possibly can next year.