{"id":10325,"date":"2011-07-19T09:20:32","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T13:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10325"},"modified":"2011-07-19T09:20:32","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T13:20:32","slug":"walsh-this-is-what-the-debt-ceiling-fight-is-really-all-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/07\/19\/walsh-this-is-what-the-debt-ceiling-fight-is-really-all-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Walsh: This is what the debt-ceiling fight is <em>really<\/em> all about"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/p\/news\/opinion\/opedcolumnists\/uncle_sam_sugar_daddy_b5PtLOJxAhWJuG66PQxZlN\" target=\"_blank\">Michael A. Walsh<\/a> puts the real issue into focus:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Forget all the numbers being tossed around in Washington &mdash; the millions and billions and trillions of dollars being taxed, borrowed, printed and spent as the country approaches the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling deadline.<\/p>\n<p>Forget the political jockeying for position between a president desperately seeking re-election in 16 months and a Congress equally desperately seeking not to be blamed for spending even more money that we don&#8217;t have.<\/p>\n<p>Forget the fact that such &#8220;entitlements&#8221; as Social Security and Medicare &mdash; social-insurance programs that the public long thought to be actuarially sound &mdash; have been exposed as little more than legal Ponzi schemes, paying today&#8217;s benefits out of tomorrow&#8217;s borrowed receipts.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, just ask yourself this simple question: When did it become the primary function of the federal government to send millions of Americans checks?<\/p>\n<p>For this, in essence, is what the debt-ceiling fight is all about &mdash; the inexorable and ultimately fatal growth of the welfare state. If you don&#8217;t believe it, just look at President Obama&#8217;s veiled threat to withhold Grandma&#8217;s Social Security benefits if Congress doesn&#8217;t let him borrow another $2 trillion or so to get himself safely past the 2012 election.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael A. Walsh puts the real issue into focus: Forget all the numbers being tossed around in Washington &mdash; the millions and billions and trillions of dollars being taxed, borrowed, printed and spent as the country approaches the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling deadline. Forget the political jockeying for position between a president desperately seeking re-election in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,13],"tags":[158,697,698,71,545],"class_list":["post-10325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-budget","tag-congress","tag-debt","tag-socialsecurity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Gx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10326,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10325\/revisions\/10326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}