D’oh! Stupid S&P Downgrade

There’s an early episode of The Simpsons where Homer, vexed by a flashing “check engine” light on his vehicle dashboard, “fixes” the problem by laying a strip of electrical tape over the light. To his mind, if there’s no warning, there’s no problem.

The same mentality is on display by President Barack Obama, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and leftist commentators in the press and blogosphere. Labeling the recent S&P reduction in the federal government’s credit rating “the Tea Party downgrade,” big spenders everywhere are blaming America’s stuttering economic engine on those citizens raising alarm.

The argument is comical. Tea Party supportive Congressional Republicans objected to putting trillions more on the nation’s credit card. The Left argues such calls for fiscal discipline somehow caused the credit rating downgrade – not decades of unrestrained spending with no plan to close the deficit or pay down the debt. They speak as if reductions in spending weren’t even an option, as if the only choice before Washington were to keep borrowing or default.

Monday, President Obama declared, “We always have been and always will be a triple A country” in spite of our credit rating. This is indicative of the same fraudulent “everyone gets a trophy” worldview which has informed the Left’s policy prescriptions for decades and brought us to where we’re at. Never mind that man behind the curtain. The clothes are visible to all but the impure.
Continue Reading D’oh! Stupid S&P Downgrade…