Throughout my life - literally lasting a span of decades - Republican always seemed to be vocal in championing fiscal responsibility. They were budget hawks all of the time, voting down proposed ideas by Democrats on the grounds of fiscal irresponsibility.
They were always particularly vocal and militant budget hawks whenever there was a Democrat in the White House.
Yet it seems strange, because it always seemed that these staunchly fiscally conservative Republicans who were so loud and proud in standing for a balanced budget during Democratic administrations would suddenly grow quiet about fiscal irresponsibility - even fiscal insanity - during Republican administrations. That was true during the Reagan years and the first Bush presidency. It was even more true during the second Bush administration.
Now, however, it has reached a point of such staggering levels of silence during these even more insane times, that it makes you wonder where all of the former budget hawks are now?
Really, we have now officially reached (and technically surpassed) $40 trillion in debt. Trump claimed he would balance the budget, and then did nothing of the sort, instead producing record budget deficits.
Both parties are responsible, true. At least in part.
Still, I fault Republicans more than Democrats for several reasons. First of all, again, there is that hypocrisy of being loud about their official budget hawk stances only when Democrats are in power, and never when Republicans are in power. That level of hypocrisy was particularly pronounced during the presidential terms of George W. Bush and especially Donald Trump, both times. And what made these political eras different, and why I blame Republicans more - even far more - is that they not only had the White House, but they were in control of Congress, too. So when you have that much power and influence, and you run record deficits and have government shutdowns and all of that other nonsense while automatically giving a Republican president everything that he wants, including raising the debt ceiling, gives them more responsibility by far in my book than the Democrats, who more often than not were too inept as a major party to really hold power.
Whatever happened to the Republicans being the party of fiscal responsibility, anyway?
I heard recently that the amount that we are paying each year just on the interest on our national debt is stagger Something like over $1 trillion.
But it seems to me that Republicans, specifically, seemed to want this level of chaos. While pretending to be the party that champions law and order, Republicans in particularly secretly are in favor of chaos in order to go to extremes to address it with overblown responses. The same is true with the budget. Get the country into a situation of undeniable fiscal crisis, and it becomes easier to make the supposedly "urgent" cuts to services that they were always in favor of in the first place. Meanwhile, they never, ever think about slashing the budget for the military industrial complex, or corporate welfare, or tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, or the surveillance state which they seem to want to impose on the entire country.
Indeed, the Republicans have also generally always had a reputation as war hawks. The budget for the military industrial complex exploded under Reagan and the first Bush administration. Then it escalated to unprecedented heights during the second Bush administration, when we were fighting two wars at the same time, while also cutting taxes. That was something which had never been done before. Not surprisingly, the national debt and budget deficits absolutely soared.
Yet as always, under Trump, everything is just so much worse. The budget for the military industrial complex is a staggering $1.5 trillion, more than the next 10 countries in the world combined. Despite promising not to get us involved in another endless war - especially in the Middle East - President Trump has done exactly that with this no-win war in Iran, which has been extremely costly to the United States in every way. There is no accountability, and blatant corruption is being witnessed on unprecedented levels that are staggering. There are more people than ever convinced that all of this translates to a serious national decline. Possibly, even probably, the fall of a once great superpower or empire.
And the very people who you might think - based on their traditional rhetoric and their loudly proclaimed patriotism - have maintained radio silence.
Of course, many of them have been quite busy cashing in themselves.
Absolutely disgusting.
Ron Smith Facebook post from August 13, 2026 · Are we great, yet? 😪
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=28635736526010178&set=a.259043657439511
No comments:
Post a Comment