Dakota Beacon

The only thing standing between American freedom and dictatorship is the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives.
 

Obama's administration is deliberately inflicting maximum pain on the American people in an attempt to create an emotional anti-Republican sentiment. We have heard about the National Park Service closing the World War II Memorial and George Washington's Mount Vernon, all privately funded.  It's a shakedown and there is much more to the story.

 John Nolte's piece for Breitbart.com titled "The List: Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain" is too well said and documented not to quote at length.

 "...[T]here doesn't seem to be any question that in mercenary pursuit of a political win, this White House is determined to unreasonably punish as many everyday people as possible. And this includes children sick with cancer.  That might sound like hyperbole, but it is not.

 "Although Barack Obama's chefs have been deemed 'essential,' employees at the National Institutes of Health who offer last-chance experimental cancer treatments to children suffering from cancer have not. Worse still, House Republicans have offered to compromise with the president and single the NIH out for funding. The White House has threatened a veto.

"Using children sick with cancer as pawns is community organizing on steroids. And the media are covering for him. When the media thought they could emotionally blackmail the GOP with these sick children, telling their story was all the rage. Now that it is Obama and the Senate
 Democrats...refusing treatment for these children, suddenly the media aren't too interested in telling their story."

 Nolte goes on to compile a list of illogical and spiteful federal closings. "Never let a crisis go to waste" counseled former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and the Obama administration has exploited some good ones. First there was the sequester forced on America by the administration assisted by the Senate Democrats to "resolve" the last (2011) debt-ceiling crisis. That led to the gutting of America's military. Then there was the recent Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government while defunding Obamacare. That led to the current federal government shutdown. Now America faces another administration-imposed bludgeon in the form of another debt-ceiling crisis.

How quickly Obama changes his position when it is to his advantage. As a one-term senator, Barack Obama voted against raising the debt limit. In his March 20, 2006, floor speech he said, "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership
 failure....Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.'...America deserves better."

Think about it. The United States does not have a shortage of money with which to pay its debt. The US has a shortage of executive and congressional Democrat discipline to live within its means.

 Set aside, for a moment, the deficit. (Those are the dollars spent each year above and beyond revenue.) Set aside, also, thoughts of the debt. (Those are the shortfall dollars accumulated year after year by deficit spending.) Focus briefly on actual tax revenue the IRS takes in.

 The US receives roughly $250 billion in taxes each month. The interest on the national debt is approximately $30 billion a month. (See Treasury Direct -- treasurydirect.gov and the American Institute for Economic Research -- aier.org.) There is more than enough tax revenue each month to pay the monthly interest on the debt. Pay interest on the debt first; fund everything else second and we won't default on our debt -- unless a "debt crisis" is manufactured in order to generate political capital.

 Raising the debt limit is a recipe for growing government and government's control over people's lives. More authority to borrow means more money to spread around bribing constituents, buying votes and stacking elections. A punishment for opposing a debt ceiling increase might look like this.  When congress fails to pass a debt ceiling increase, then the Obama administration, through Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, continues defunding more government programs. Cuts would be targeted and designed to inflict maximum public pain. It's all about shifting the congressional balance of power.

 Obama's real objective is for Democrats to re-take the US House of Representatives in 2014. Any reason he can create for people to vote against Republicans in 2014 is to his advantage. Exacerbating a crisis so that more Americans will feel pain and then blame Republicans is truly sinister and insidious.

 Bottom line: The US does not have to default on its debt -- unless the president decides it is in his political interest to do so. There is no default unless Obama unilaterally wills it.
 
 Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or
 bnt@midstatetel.com