No Money Down - No Payments Due - Ever

Where have all the cloth coats gone? Since when did Republicans become the party of easy credit cards and ostentatious display? When did the GOP decide to live on debt and pass the bill on to their grandchildren? Well that’s only technically that they’re stiffing their grandchildren; really it’s more like leaving the bill for the children and grandchildren of the middle class. How on earth did these neo-robber barons conceive of – no, pull off – hijacking the party of trust busting TR and Honest Abe and turn it once again into the tool of the successors to J. P. Morgan, the Astors and the old time pre-reform Rockefellers?

For all of the profligacy, the Democrats seemed at least partly committed to being the party of Robin Hood. Growing older, I’ve come to realize that the handling charges in such entities as non-profit organizations are more than enough to assure home addresses in Georgetown, Beacon Hill, and Palo Alto, but their hearts, bless their hearts, seemed always to be in the right place. So it was as they soaked the rich to help the lot of those most in need.

Dang, how did these boys from Texas and Wyoming gull the middle class into thinking they were guiding their party down the garden path of fiscal responsibility while in actuality they were lining their pockets and charging the bills to the grandchildren of the rubes buying the McMansions and Humvies? Some damn trick, eh?

Now as The Used car Salesman in Chief, aka, Dubya peddles the snake oil guaranteed to cure the ills of the Gulf Coast at no cost, really at less than no cost since taxes will continue to go down for all taxpayers – especially those of the neo robber barons. Does this not sound surprisingly like the line put forth by Professor Henry Hill? But this isn’t The Music Man with a formulaic happy ending; this is real life.

We’re going to have to restore the Gulf Coast of this there can be no doubt. And, regardless of your views on Iraq, we’re going to have to continue to pour lives and treasure into that unhappy land. But, `read his lips’, we’re not going to have to pay for either one. For the Used Car Salesman in Chief, it’s all one big Washington’s Birthday Sale; drive your Hummer off the lot with no payments due until your grandchildren grow up and take over the payment book.

It’s galling to me that the party of Robert Taft and all those `pay as you go’ Republicans are more than happy to avoid reality and spend, spend, spend far faster than the democrats they label as the party of big spenders, all the while institute policies undermining the middle class and creating budget and trade deficits that really don’t mean anything. “Now who’re you gonna believe – me or your lyin’ eyes?”

The Administration’s got economists lined up from Capitol Hill to Wall Street guaranteeing that these deficit numbers don’t mean a thing. “Buy now, no payments due until 2018!”

I know there are Cloth Coat Republicans out there. They’ve sent people to Congress from Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, even from Arizona and Nebraska, so when are they going to wake up around the rest of the country? It better damn well be soon. It better be, those same law makers getting ready to max out our national credit card just recently passed Bankruptcy Reform. Our grandchildren just won’t be able to roll that debt over and continue to make minimum monthly payments.

Blog on!

Wild Bill