In the debate, once again, Senator McCain called for a spending freeze to deal with our current economic crisis. Let me be clear - the worst thing the government can do right now is to freeze spending. When no one is spending - government, individual citizens and businesses - jobs disappear, businesses collapse, families go bankrupt, governments are starved of tax revenues, unemployment and Medicare expenditures sky rocket creating huge deficits... am I making myself clear?
Consumers, sorry, citizens (still stuck in Bushspeak) were told to go shopping after 9/11 to shore up our economy, and look where it got us - mortgages we couldn't afford and the highest credit card debt ever recorded, nearly a trillion dollars(1). We aren't likely to fall for that line again, and if consumers aren't buying, businesses won't spend. So guess who's left? Either way, we're going to have deficits - with spending freezes that lead to lower tax revenues and raise welfare outflows or through job creation programs and healthcare reform that alleviates financial pressure on citizens and businesses. Only Obama's plan has a light at the end of the tunnel.
And did anyone catch this nonsensical exchange:
BROKAW: The three -- health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?
MCCAIN: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom. I think it's very important that we reform our entitlement programs.
My friends, we are not going to be able to provide the same benefit for present-day workers that we are going -- that present-day retirees have today. We're going to have to sit down across the table, Republican and Democrat, as we did in 1983 between Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill.
I know how to do that. I have a clear record of reaching across the aisle, whether it be Joe Lieberman or Russ Feingold or Ted Kennedy or others. That's my clear record.
We can work on nuclear power plants. Build a whole bunch of them, create millions of new jobs. We have to have all of the above, alternative fuels, wind, tide, solar, natural gas, clean coal technology. All of these things we can do as Americans and we can take on this mission and we can overcome it.
My friends, some of this $700 billion ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations.
As far as health care is concerned, obviously, everyone is struggling to make sure that they can afford their premiums and that they can have affordable and available health care. That's the next issue.
But we can do them all at once. There's no -- and we have to do them all at once. All three you mentioned are compelling national security requirements.
What $700 billion? Going to terrorists? Reagan and Tip O'Neill? Does anyone under 50 know what he's talking about? And by the way, we are not even going to get the Social Security benefit that seniors get today - the one that makes them choose between medicine and food?
Now, about the campaigning of late. Has anyone else noticed that the McCain/Palin campaign is going after the white racist vote? Thankfully, yes. Three takes on it:
John Stewart on how McCain/Palin is inciting angry mobs
Roland Martin of CNN on the euphamisms Joe Six-Pack, Soccer Mom, NASCAR Dad, and Small Town America
The New York Times on how Palin's demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses
(1) http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/plastic_problems.html
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