It took Washington’s professional politicians about two seconds to begin issuing accusatory statements in response to S&P’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. Predictably, those statements sought to shift the blame to somebody else. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blamed Republicans for refusing to consider tax hikes as part of the debt-ceiling deal. House Speaker John Boehner condemned Democrats for demanding a debt-ceiling hike with no spending cuts or entitlement reforms. Whatever else we might say about them, our political leaders certainly know how to point fingers at each other.
But playing the blame game won’t fix the economy. And the economy cannot be fixed without addressing Washington’s spending addiction. As Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, notes, tax revenues flowing into the U.S. Treasury since 2003 – the year of the biggest Bush tax cuts – have increased 20 percent, but government spending has skyrocketed 60 percent during the same period. That is the main reason why the U.S. government now has a national debt approaching $14.5 trillion, an amount equal to the value of the nation’s entire economy.
