The Second Liberty Bond Act, (click title to entry - thank you) which helped finance U.S. participation in World War I, established a cap on federal debt in 1917 at the now-quaint level of $8 billion....
...Republicans are intent on extracting major concessions from the Obama administration in exchange for agreeing to lift the debt limit. They will play a game of debt-limit chicken with Geithner and President Barack Obama.
While administration officials would like the public to believe that political gamesmanship is unprecedented and irresponsible, the opposite is true. Debt-limit debates are commonplace and can be political theater at its finest....
While quibbling about the debt ceiling seems appropriate to some, it is grossly hideous for Republicans to even embark on the debate.
George Walker Bush was in office for eight years and seven of those years saw the debt ceiling increased.
From a Sept 2008 cbs story: "Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It'll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration. In fact it was just two months ago, on July 30, that President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a provision raising the debt ceiling to $10.615 trillion."
The theatrics are political, aggressive and seek to feed the political fodder the Right Wing seems to thrive on these days.
The State of Union is coming up and the TWO rebuttals by two political factions in the USA will 'make theater' of very serious issues in this country. They will mock the President and bring about disrespect. So what else is new? If the Right Wing truly loves the USA they will have ANSWERS and not rhetoric to solve the problems beset on this country by a run amok Republican majority for many, many years.
I do believe the Right Wing in the USA pride themselves on ACCOUNTABILITY. I hope I hear plenty of it about THEIR responsibility to THE MESS we are all facing due to their irresponsibility, including the economic collapse and RESULTED 'Great Recession' which they never bothered to 'bailout.'
