THE FATE OF THE REPUBLIC HANGS IN THE BALANCE!

If you’ve detected a distinct retro feeling to the unfolding tragedy in Washington, you’re not alone.  The two warring parties remind me of nothing so much as 1950’s Japanese horror film enemies, each defending to the death a reactionary vision of the country.

The Republicans seem to want to return to the ‘80’s- a Reaganesque vision of “starve the beast” limited government (or perhaps the 1880’s pre Teddy Roosevelt).  The Democrats seem to want to return to the 30’s- to  “tax the rich” and let the academic experts tell us how to target the money to solve our society’s problems.  They’ve both forgotten they don’t just work for the people who voted for them, but the rest of us.

The Republicans are right to have insisted on not enabling a continuing and unsustainble public debt, but their vision of how you fix the problem is madness, particularly the idea that there is some meaningful difference between pork in public spending budgets and pork cleverly imported into the tax code.  The Democrats are right to have insisted in some revenue contribution but irresponsible to try and ring fence unsustainable spending for “entitlements”. The right solution is one where every one of us makes some meaningful contribution to not borrowing ourselves into oblivion, not just a few.

Too bad these two delusional leaderships can’t both lose without taking our financial system and our hard earned savings with them.  It would be great if it were only a movie…