Tea Party Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said this week that his generation's contribution to the national debt is "one of the most immoral things" the nation has ever done. Gohmert went on to include debt in a conversation of national tragedies such as slavery.
“Slavery and abortion are the two most horrendous things this country has done but when you think about the immorality of wild, lavish spending on our generation and forcing future generations to do without essentials just so we can live lavishly now, it's pretty immoral," Gohmert said in an interview with Newsmax.
The aside came during a broader defense of "sequestration" cuts, in which Gohmert argued that "people have got to understand that we're serious about stopping the massive load we are putting on our children and their children. It is one of the most immoral things this country has ever done."The Huffington Post | Politics
Louie Gohmert: Debt Is 'One Of The Most Immoral Things This Country Has Ever Done'
Nick Wing
Gohmert Pyle
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Tea Party morons (and others) have a phobia about the word “debt”, is yet another argument for implementing Milton Friedman’s idea, namely to dispense with national debt altogether: that would mean that the only “liability” (if you can call it that) issued by government would be currency (or monetary base to be accurate).
ReplyDeleteCurrency is simply debt that pays no interest. And given that the national debt of several major countries currently pays very near zero interest, that wouldn’t be such a big step to take.
Abandoning national debt WOULD MEAN abandoning or at least downgrading interest rate adjustments as means of regulating economies. Instead, one would use fiscal tools to do the adjustment. But there is a wealth of literature on the benefits of the latter policy.
And that is a high bar. :o
ReplyDeleteLot of contradictions in the neoliberal "conservative" agenda of small government, low taxes, strong military and traditional family values.
ReplyDeleteSmall govt + strong military is a contradiction since the military is part of govt and military contractors are funded by govt, or as they would say, "taxes." So how do you have a "strong military" in the sense of a military larger than the militaries of the rest of the world and still have small government and low taxes, when you think that taxes fund govt expenditure.
Same with small govt, low taxes and traditional family values. Certainly education is a traditional family value (excepting the stupid faction of the party), and govt has traditionally funded education, at least partially with taxes, since education is funded at the state and local levels, very often with property taxes.
What Boehner is saying actually is that above a certain level, taxation is "stealing." And that level is determined by self-styled conservatives who favor expansive military spending at the expense of social programs that uphold traditional family values.
The logic is strained, to say the least.
We were on our way to be debt free when Bush decided that the rich cou;d use the money instead. For conservatives to mention debt makes me sick to my stomach. Where were they when Bush Jr. was passing his tax cut.
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