The Fox News weekend yakkers never cease to amaze with their 'brilliance.' To create a sense of panic in the viewers, they decide that nobody in either party is running on the exorbitant national debt as a major part of their presidential platform. It's time to sound the alarm and commence the panic. This is a conversation that erodes as it goes. Spoiler alert: The USA is worse than Greece.
Charles Payne, one of Cavuto's guests, reminds the Fox 'News' viewer that the Tea Party idiotically started from uninformed outrage created by the idea that social safety nets alone are responsible for our deficit. Of course framing these programs as entitlements instead of EARNED BENEFITS makes them sound like a handout to the poor, and GOP-TV has instilled in its viewers a dread of such 'charity.' They forget to mention things like two massive wars, tax cuts for billionaires, free trade agreements and offshoring of trillions of dollars which has removed money from the public coffers. Shhhhh.... don't tell anyone, we're blaming the poor.
Cavuto thinks they should frame this idea that entitlements have caused our massive $19 trillion debts. Why hasn't any presidential candidate thought of this ingenious strategy?
Julie Roginsky, a Democrat and the apparent lone, sane person on the panel, explains that people do not consider Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs, they are, as stated previously, earned benefits. When a Republican or Democrat wants to run on such nonsense, they are most assuredly going to get a beat down from the electorate. She opens the door for such an idea, knowing the consequences of that crazy strategy.
For once, Ben Stein admits the Clinton Era tax rates, had they been continued, would have shrunk this massive national debt. But Ol' GWB decided to give a giant gift to the wealthy taxpayers who normally and deservedly, shoulder this revenue-generating burden for those who cannot. This put Republicans on the hook too, but not for long. Here comes Gary Kaltbaum, a so so trader with a so so record of mediocrity. He's going to blame it squarely on Democrats.
Kaltbaum puts the blame for the start of this debt spiral, during the last year of the Clinton Presidency, where the budget equaled $1.8 trillion. Somehow the Bush years never happened. Then he bitches about President Obama:
I watch my president yesterday come out and take victory laps and not one question was asked about the $8.4 trillion in new debt under his watch that has been accumulated. All he kept talking about was this, that and the other thing that did not matter (according to whom?)
Cavuto comes back that Bernie and Hillary are thinking of just 'more ways to feed the beast.' So this is just going to get ridiculous if a Democrat wins, because debt incurred by GOP Administrations doesn't matter.
Payne explains how deficits happen.
If we take in $3 trillion and the government spends $4 trillion, if we take in $4 trillion then the government spends $5 trillion,
for the No Shit Sherlock viewer who is likely watching, We have to stop electing 'these people,' but Julie Roginsky reminds them that 'these people' come from both sides of the proverbial aisle.
Kaltbaum freaks out over the whole idea of a SOCIALIST like Bernie Sanders and welcomes the viewers to take a trip down to Caracas, Venezuela and see how that's working out for the folks. Then the conversation plummets down the path of perpetual perfidy.
PAYNE: Take for instance Greece... they had a military coup.
ROGINSKY: We're not Greece.
KALTBAUM: We're worse than Greece.
Futilely, the sane person, Roginsky, attempted to explain how the Greeks had no ability to control their own currency, so their situation wasn't comparable to ours, but it doesn't matter with this crew. The sky is falling, the economy will collapse any day now and we will suffer a fate worse than the Greeks, because crazy Bernie will kill us all. Oy vey!