When President Obama isn’t off interrupting Bachelorette episodes or playing golf, he occasionally makes time to deal with pressing domestic and international issues, like taking down al-Qaida or rescuing the American auto industry.
Yet, the President and Speaker Boehner were apparently not content with just playing games on the golf course, for they also wanted to produce a full-fledged crisis that put our nation’s economy and credit in danger.
Unlike AIG or Merrill Lynch, we can’t simply depend on someone else, like our good pal and creditor, China, to bail us out. Maintaining a healthy credit rating is a substantial part of making sure that interest levels remain low, thus allowing us to remain in good-standing with such creditors as China.
To maintain such A+ credit, or AAA if you will, a nation must demonstrate that they’re able to operate in a healthy, efficient manner to pay their bills, manage their deficit and function as a sovereign state.
Yet, in the Tea Party Shanghai of the 112th Congress, remaining in good standing with our creditors has fallen from priority. Instead of dealing with actual economic crises, congressmen and women have turned to manufacturing their own crisis. It’s just, that in this type of manufacturing, there aren’t any jobs created.
Much of our country is facing severe drought, our unemployment rate remains high, we are entangled in several conflicts throughout the world, and each of these are apparently not enough for our faithful congress.
Instead of coming to a reasonable, thoughtful and multi-lateral approach to tackle our deficit, congress spent the month of July walking out of discussions, making inflammatory speeches and getting nothing done. In the end, all we have to show for the final, official plan is a lowered credit rating from Standard and Poor’s.
This credit downgrade is a direct result of the inefficiencies of the United States congress to make a deal regarding the debt ceiling and our nation’s deficit. Yet, one of the most asinine components of this entire crisis is that the debt ceiling is a congress-made institution in itself.
There is no international law that dictates that we must have, set and regulate a national debt ceiling. In essence, the entire debt ceiling debacle was a crisis made by congress, not only in their inefficiencies in coming to a deal, but in having such a debt ceiling in the first place.
However, it looks as if congress still hasn’t learned from their mistakes. Everyone is simply blaming the other party. Conservatives claim the crisis is a result of too much government, liberals claim the crisis is a result of too little government.
The only thing that is for certain is that their endless bickering and childish games are taking a toll on the country, as the stock market has plunged further than it has since 2008, the United States suffered a credit downgrade and millions of Americans are still uninsured and unemployed.
In today’s time, we have plenty of battles to fight, and while we may certainly disagree on the best way to tackle such problems, one would think that we could all agree that we don’t need to conjure up any new battles.
