Peacetime Economy?
In trying to blast Obama and the economy, conservative pundits keep on evoking that we are in a peacetime economy. Seriously? With all troops scheduled to be removed from Iraq by the end of 2011 and Afghan troop removal to begin in the middle of next year, I am quite surprised by the Conservative declaration that we are in a peacetime economy. Let’s go to the quotes.
The Wall Street Journal writes:
Meanwhile, corporate earnings have been saved by governments running up the biggest peacetime deficits in their history and by historically low official interest rates.
The Weekly Standard writes:
The year saw what must be the most rapid peace-time deterioration in the nation’s financial position.
Why have Conservative pundits forgotten our troops? They just must hate them.
Tags: Economy, Republicans
This is part of the delusion that Government Is Free. If you can convince people that this is “peacetime”, you can get them to forget that a big part of the deficit problem are wars that are not being paid for. And you can convince them that the country can afford more belligerence towards Iran. Your liberal media will be picking up this bit of foolishness shortly……
They have not forgotten our troops and they have the same level of contempt for those who serve this year as they have in the past.
The term “peacetime” relates to spending in relation to the military industrial complex, which has evaporated in the last few years. It has been the stated policy of Congress to do this, so the term “peacetime” is misplaced.
Concerning the deficit. We will borrow more to fund the renewal of the tax cuts than we will for the wars. And we will waste more money due to our lack of any real health care reform that we will on the wars.
Nobody has clean hands when it comes to disabled veterans. I am a totally disabled veteran and basically a shut-in.
Don’t assume too much about veterans or medical care for active duty troops and their families.
The issues with active duty health care are complex. Veterans have it better with the VA, however; my family is provided health insurance by the VA since I am one of the few totally disabled. The issue is that our patriotic doctors and medical system do not accept it. Why? Because they are not required to accept assignment, unlike other government insurance programs.
But it is not correct to characterize military or VA care as single payer. You could make that care for tri-care insurance, but there are major flaws in coverage because our government allows loopholes that create major obstacles in receiving care.
And the VA is not insurance, it is a health care system. We should eliminate insurance in our country and force our system into a VA model, but that will never happen.
And ChampVA, insurance for dependents of us totally disabled vets is insurance, but gatekeepers at doctor’s offices block ChampVA patients from ever getting care. Well unless they agree to pay the full bill above what ChampVA covers.
Meanwhile the only segment of our population that does anything to help veterans is the VA itself, and our members in Congress who support it.
There are a ton of groups that do a great job raising billions each year under the heading of helping veterans, but they do very little for veterans as a whole.