BV Readers: Raise the Debt Ceiling Without Any Conditions!

For what it’s worth, here’s what Blue Virginia readers want Congress to do with regard to the debt ceiling.

1. 49% gave the correct answer: Raise the debt ceiling without any conditions, as has been done hundreds of times in U.S. history (including dozens under Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and George W. Bush). The bottom line is that the technical matter of raising the debt ceiling, per se, has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of the deficit – the imbalance between spending and revenues – or the accumulated debt over the course of U.S. history. Absolutely. Nothing. Ergo, raising the debt ceiling should not be tied to anything, let alone held hostage to an important, but almost completely unrelated, issue.

2. 26% gave the second-best answer: If the technical and utterly necessary matter of the debt ceiling is going to be linked, foolishly, to the unrelated issue of how to balance the U.S. budget moving forward, then the best option is the Progressive Caucus’ “People’s Budget”. This plan actually “Eliminates the Deficit and Raises a $31 Billion Surplus In Ten Years,” “Puts America Back to Work & Restores America’s Competitiveness,” “Creates a Fairer Tax System,” “Safeguards Social Security for the Next 75 Years,” and “Protects Health.” The plan is supported by The Economist, Forbes, The Center for American Progress, Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs, and many others. Why aren’t we doing this?!?

3. After the top two, there’s a HUGE dropoff in support, to single digits. Just for the record, the remaining choices of BV readers are the Mark Warner/”Gang of Six” plan (6%); “other” (5%), “I have no clue but this sucks” (5%), and even “Eric Cantor’s my Tea Party hero” (2.6%). All are bad choices, although I’ve got to agree that “this sucks.”

Meanwhile, the American people believe that a combination of spending cuts and tax increases is the best option for cutting the deficit. Which, of course, means that Teapublican’ts are insisting on NOT doing that. Why? Because they don’t give a rat’s hindquarters what the American people think, just as they don’t give a rat’s hindquarters about reality, fact, rationality, or whether they destroy the American economy by their adherence to blind, extreme ideology. In the end, they just want what they want, my way or the highway. Oh, and they want to “break” Obama. Don’t ever forget that.