Battle Dancing... Washington Style

Last night, July 25th, both President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner took the time to address the American people and lay out their current view on the debt ceiling crisis.  President Obama described his path to a solution as balanced, involving spending cuts and removing loopholes that allow the wealthiest people and corporations to escape tax burdens they ought to be shouldering.  John Boehner described his plan  as following the common sense of not spending more than you take in.  The solution isn't to take more in, it's to get our spending down to a level we can afford based on what we already receive.

President Obama conveyed to me a compassionate, sensible tone that convinced many voters back in 2008 that real change could be on the horizon.  Boehner went with some folksy vibes about being a small business owner and common sense money management.  Since demorcrats are the new centrist republicans, Obama's rational tone made sense.  And since some republicans are the new mouth-foaming illiterati, Boehner's over-simplification and folksy approach also made sense.  Those two sentences may not seem fair and balanced, but that's because when I hear Boehner claim that this crisis is of Obama's making, I get angry that he won't admit the fairly large role the Tea Party constituency of his own party had in bringing us to this point.  I sincerely believe Boehner is willing to cut a deal with Obama that works out for everyone to some degree.  But as a career politician, I believe Boehner wants to remain Speaker of the House more than he wants to do his job correctly or stand up to the ignorance throwing gas on this particular fire.

Everyone already knows that the debt ceiling covers a budget already in place, passed by Congress.  Everyone should already know that Congress already agreed to these expenditures and to renege on them comes off as either absurd, or stinking of the type of dementia that usually pushes family members to sue for power of attorney.  And everyone should also already know that the time to tackle these problems is during the budget debate, not months after the fact.  I feel that both sides had turned this simple, usually forgone conclusion, into an opportunity to make political moves with a lit stick of dynamite.

Here are links to both speeches if you'd rather hear their speeches directly rather than allowing me to uselessly blog-filter it down for you.  Just to prove my bias, Obama's link has an HD option, Boehner... 480P.  Take that right wingers.  There's a new force on the interwebs.