Last Updated : 16 January 2013 at 13:50 IST
The Republicans are holding the sacrosanct US debt a hostage and is refusing to raise the debt ceiling so that they could extricate some spending cuts. Alas! they know-not what they are doing; and they are doing it for the second time: throwing the fragile global recovery to winds.
“Congress is not being asked to give permission for future borrowing, but for the authorization to borrow to fund programs that Congress itself has already approved.”--Port Land Press Herald, said in an opinion piece recently.
The quotation above sums it up well and good!
Judging by the way things are proceeding, the Republicans are hell bent on making the President come to them with a cap in hand and beg.
The quote simply neutralises Republican intentions in effect and brings out Republicans' egoistic political jingoism and despicable brinkmanship; they want to rattle the markets and see to it that the AAA rated US government default or precisely, create such an impression around and bring President Obama to the discussion table.
What they want in return is spending cuts.
Everybody would acknowledge that US spends more than it earns and lives on credit; this has to be brought under some sort of control. But mixing the same with raising of debt-ceiling is an ill advised cocktail; the consequences would be catastrophic. US cannot afford to default. Not even by a penny. “If it happens..?” would be a blasphemous question raised at the altar of capitalism.
The spending problem is more of a question of culture.
The boom times taught America to live beyond its means; now a crunch time is the best time to unlearn that. And it has to start from schools. Voluntary austerity is something they can learn from the East.
On a latest note, the Republicans have started to push for prioritizing payments. Pay the debt first and then only pay your soldier! How rediculous! Markets are no fool.
“Payment prioritization doesn't stop payments, it just delays them. Then the aggrieved party sues the government, and probably wins, and it turns into a bloody mess," Keith Hennessey, now an economist at Stanford, said in a blog post this week and was quoted by Reuters as saying.
Even a coterie of Republicans are against this idea of payment prioritization.
Arise, awake Republicans. If you have some patriotism left in you, put the nation before your ego and end this once and for all!
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