S&P Plays Adult

Our politicians can't say they weren't warned that simply cutting future borrowing to $7 trillion from $10 trillion over ten years would result in a downgrade to our credit rating. Now that the US has been downgraded for the first time in our history the rush will be on to assign blame and avoid responsibility. Messrs. Garvey and Moskowitz will inevitably try to scapegoat those "hostage-taking, terrorist tea-baggers" while ignoring the true culprit, deficit spending. Washington spends $300 billion a month of which $120 billion is borrowed. The S&P looked at those numbers and the lack of a plan from the White House or the Senate(the House passed a budget) to address this imbalance and took the appropriate action. A note to Obama's press flak, unless you're Stacy Keibler "showing a lot of leg" isn't a plan.

Now, to be fair, Pres. Obama pushed heroically albeit futilely to end tax breaks for the corporate jet-set which would've brought $3 billion in revenue over ten years to the federal treasury. This amount would almost cover one day's worth of deficit spending($4 billion). Our largest foreign creditor China, agrees with S&P, it's the spending stupid. For those who believe that tax increases on the wealthy will solve all our problems, the Tax Foundation provides a needed dose of reality. They found that Washington could declare a maximum wage of $100,000, confiscating every penny that American's earn over that amount and it still wouldn't cover current spending. It's time for our representatives to face fiscal reality and drastically cut the size of government. Harry Reid's beloved cowboy poets will need to pay for their own festivals from now on. The next time someone wants to measure the size of gay men's johnsons they'll need to find private financing, not taxpayer funds for the project. Start with cutting discretionary spending which has ballooned by 24% under President Obama and move on to the universe of indefensible subsidies that Washington bestows on special interests. After passing this leadership challenge and proving themselves adults our representatives will need to reform entitlements that currently have trillions in unfunded liabilities to ensure that they continue to provide the safety net for Americans that are depending on them.

Because Congress has been negligent in passing the appropriations bills to keep our government running, they have ample opportunity to show S&P that they are serious about getting our nation's fiscal house in order. They need look no further than the pounding the stock market took when the latest of the PIIGS, Italy and Spain became the latest dominoes to fall due to excessive spending. Europe is screaming that the social democrat, big government model of government has failed and we must change course before it's too late. S&P's downgrade is a wake-up call for Congress, President Obama and the American electorate that the days of reckless spending can't go on any longer and that America isn't too big to fail.