Sorry there was no obstruction. The house presented options that were shot down in the senate. To say that both parties were obstructionists is fact, to say that one was is simply a defensive mechanism that you regularly employ.
Furthermore to say that after not submitting any budget while having a supermajority for over 18 months should be excused because “everybody assumed the debt ceiling was going to be raised” is a pretty sad portrait of why we are where we are.
So let’s review that strategy, We didn’t deal with the problem because we figured we would get a debt limit raised so we wouldn’t have to… deal with the problem? So when would the problem be dealt with? I don’t know, why deal with it when we don’t have to?
It seems to me that the democrats had a fantastic opportunity to deal with the problem, the choices would have been hard, but they could have picked and chose what would be cut and what would not have been cut. Politically would it have been suicidal? Perhaps but it would have earned my vote in the future.
I have posted more then once about how problematic things become when rates do go up. The cost of refinancing debt as old debt is retired at low rates gets very scary. So the excuses of, well we deal with this down the road when wars are over and such doesn’t wash. Deal it with now, stop Libya, pull out of the wars, declare a loss or whatever, and pull the plug, would have been rough but seems to me the fiscally prudent thing to do. Curiously though that didn’t happen and the word you neglect to discuss at all, Libya did happen.
Don’t worry because if the repubs were in the drivers seat I would be saying the same thing. The only difference is you would cheering instead of rationalizing. Bush started the debt trajectory and the current administration as added jet fuel to it. Today you rationalize and when and if there is a change of leadership for the party you dont like, you will attack them. Even if the behavior is fundamentally the same, which it will be.
