5 lies of the debt debate

The article below is from Human Events.
Enough said.

Incontinent spending put America $14 trillion in debt. 
The politicians who borrowed and spent us into debt 
want permission to borrow more so that they can 
spend more. And if they don’t get permission to 
borrow more money, they assure us that our debt 
woes will worsen.

Does this seem like a solution or a rationalization?

Washington is hooked on spending. Like other 
addicts, politicians tell lies to get their fix. 
Jonesing for more money, they insist that 
raising the debt limit is the best way to limit 
America’s debt.

Bad habits are tough to break. Surely, dishonesty
 about the problem doesn’t bring us any closer 
to a solution.

In the spirit of providing clarity through the 
haze of deceit, here are the five big lies the 
spending addicts tell to satiate their cravings 
for more of your money:  

Lie #5 Americans Want a Tax Increase
“Eighty percent of the American people support 
an approach that includes revenues and cuts,”
 the president claimed Friday. “So the notion 
that somehow the American people aren’t sold 
is not the problem. The problem is members of 
Congress are dug in ideologically into various 
positions because they boxed themselves in 
with previous statements.” A poll released the 
previous day by Rasmussen showed that while 
a majority of Democrats want a tax increase 
as part of the deal, just 34 percent of Americans 
favor one in conjunction with raising the debt ceiling.

Lie #4 The Rich Don’t Pay Their Fair Share
Obama contended in his Saturday radio address 
that he merely planned on “asking the wealthiest 
Americans to pay their fair share” and that 
“we have to ask corporations and the wealthiest 
Americans to share in that sacrifice.” 
Leaving aside whether Obama intends to merely 
“ask” wealthy Americans for more of their money, 
there is the subjective question of what constitutes
 a “fair share.” A study by the Tax Foundation 
found that America’s richest tenth pays a higher 
percentage of income taxes than their counterparts 
in Germany, Japan, Great Britain, and every other 
similar industrialized nation. According to the 
Internal Revenue Service, the wealthiest five 
percent of Americans pays 59 percent of income 
taxes and the bottom fifty percent pays three percent 
of income taxes. 
Who, precisely, isn’t paying their “fair” share?

Lie #3 The U.S. Will Default If Congress Doesn’t
 Raise the Debt Ceiling 
The president has repeatedly referred to a failure 
to raise the debt limit as “Armageddon.” But if the 
debt ceiling is not raised before it expires the first 
week of August, it’s not the end of Washington’s 
money—let alone the end of the world. The U.S. Treasury 
will claim revenues of about $172 billion for the 
remainder of the month. Even practitioners of 
fuzzy math understand that revenues of $172 
billion are enough to cover an interest payment
 of $29 billion. Not only are the revenues sufficient
 to pay the interest on the debt, but military salaries, 
Social Security, and Medicare, too. 
Dramatic spending cuts would necessarily follow 
a decision not to raise the debt ceiling. 
But it’s a lie to equate an act of fiscal responsibility 
(refusing to allow more borrowing) with one of 
recklessness (default).

Lie #2 The Bush Tax Cuts Caused the Debt
“It turns out that our problem is we cut taxes 
without paying for them over the last decade,” 
Obama claimed during Friday’s press conference. 
But revenues, which had been in decline 
immediately prior to the enactment of the 
Bush tax cuts, increased by more than a third 
soon after the top rates fell from 40 percent 
to 35 percent. While receipts declined dramatically 
in the aftermath of the financial/housing crisis, 
they had increased even more dramatically—
$1.8 trillion in 2003 to $2.6 trillion in 2007—in 
the wake of the Bush tax cuts. As with the Harding/Coolidge, Kennedy/Johnson, and Reagan rate reductions, revenue counterintuitively increased following the Bush tax cuts.

Lie #1 Conservatives Who Oppose Raising t
he Debt Ceiling Are (Insert Insult Here)
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee sees 
racism fueling opposition to raising the debt ceiling.
Newsweek’s Tina Brown calls Republicans “suicide bombers.” Economist Paul Krugman calls the GOP “crazy.”
 But there are sensible reasons why an elected 
official might believe that taking on new debt 
would make a debt crisis worse, not better. 
“The fact that we are here today to debate 
raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership 
failure,” Senator Obama explained in 2006 
regarding his vote against raising the debt ceiling. 
“It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay 
its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on 
ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries 
to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies.” 
Amen.