Who’s the Deadbeat Here?

I sit down once a month, whether I need to or not, and pay my bills. I make sure that I have enough money deposited in my account before I do this. This is because I am not a deadbeat and I don’t float checks for more than is in my account.

 

I don’t, in short, commit fraud on my creditors.

And if on bad months I don’t have enough cash in my checking account to pay all of my bills I do some magic and play raid the rainy day fund.

But never, remotely, do I ever think of telling my creditors that the well is dry so they are going to have to wait for the check until I can negotiate with them a better deal where I pay less but they provide the same goods and services, or even increased amounts of them.

This is what is happening with the Republicans in Congress right now. They want to default on payments for things that they have already ordered up and even already consumed. And the threat is that if we don’t get to negotiate a spending deal all the while not paying them … well… they don’t get paid.

If I go and do that, there goes my credit rating right down the toilet.

So I can’t borrow money to pay my debts.

But this is the load of bat guano that these Republicans – who have always claimed to be the fiscally responsible ones – are offering up. They've run up our debts with two unpaid for wars and porkbarrel spending that had everyone's head spinning. Even John McCain said that the (Republican) government was "spending money like a drunken sailor." And now that the Obama Administration struggles with this ponderous debt, they reach in their pockets and turn them out in the universal symbol of "Sorry, I'm broke."

 

I teach physics to teenagers who have more sense.

 

So let’s see. Where can we cut spending? Where do we decide whether family A gets food stamps or Air Group X gets a few of the brand new F-35 Lightning II fighter jets (built from a $382 billion defense program)?

Hmmm. Choices, choices.