But sometimes, when politicians would insist on releasing hot air at the wrong time, Papou Pete would become aggravated. And so, at these special moments, he had a favorite saying:
Af-TOS mee-lye, ke o GUY-thou-ros KLA-nee.
Loosely translated, it means:
“When he speaks, the donkey breaks wind.”
And so, as frightened Democrats tried to blame conservatives for Standard & Poor’s downgrading of America’s credit rating, I thought of my grandpa’s words.
You’d think a columnist would be required to read what the actual downgrade report said:
Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on
discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on
more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have
dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions
only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements,
the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key
to long-term fiscal sustainability.
===
Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now
assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012,
remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority
of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise
revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act. Key
macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP
growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade.
Our revised upside scenario–which, other things being equal, we view as
consistent with the outlook on the ‘AA+’ long-term rating being revised to
stable–retains these same macroeconomic assumptions. In addition, it
incorporates $950 billion of new revenues on the assumption that the 2001 and
2003 tax cuts for high earners lapse from 2013 onwards, as the Administration
is advocating. In this scenario, we project that the net general government
debt would rise from an estimated 74% of GDP by the end of 2011 to 77% in 2015
and to 78% by 2021
So revenue is included in the best case scenario and a reason why the downgrade was done by S & P was the inability to reach some sort of compromise that included revenue increases.
Who else would be at fault other than the Tea Party and their fantasies of rugged individualism?