Lies, Lies, Lies!

Candidate Mitt Romney's attack ads on President Obama just plain lie about the President's performance in office.  Especially the ads that blame the President for the increasing deficit when one does some research, mainly the reduction in tax revenue caused by the deep recession we're all experiencing in job cuts, the overall reduction in middle class income, and the massive middle class tax breaks included in the last stimulus package passed by Congress.  People aren't paying as much tax as before, and we're still paying for two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on our collective credit card started by the preceding President in response to the 9/11 attacks; one of those wars wasn't justified and you can guess which one.  As a result, we have a massive debt to overcome.  Yes, I said overcome, not pay off.  Our government never has run on any kind of household-like budget and never will, so comparing the govt's budget to a household one is an exercise in futility like comparing apples to elephants.  Out federal government never has actually paid off any debt, but, in the past, grown our economy faster than the debt has grown making its proportion of our GDP small, therefore manageable.  The same thing can happen again, but it will take time.

Our previous President did not leave this country in any sort of good economic shape when he left office, and our current President has spent these last four years cleaning up the mess.  The mess is still here, but it is smaller indicating positive progress.  Let me put it this way, if our govt and the Federal Reserve allowed the cascade of bankruptcies threatening to take out our largest banks, our largest employers would have been not able to obtain the cash necessary not only to expand and introduce new products, but not even to run day-to-day operations.  The largest corporations borrow frequently to run, and pay back as necessary rather than keep the huge amounts of cash on the books to keep running; they found it was more efficient and cost-effective.  This catastrophe would have brought about a full-on depression and unemployment probably gone to 1930's depression era levels of around twenty to twenty-five percent, i.e. one-in-five to one-in-four people unemployed as compared to the approx. 2-in-50 people unemployed currently.  A chilling difference.  President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress at that time (the 1930's) set up precautionary measures in case another Black Tuesday should happen again, and it did about six years ago.  Our govt and the Federal Reserve did their jobs in preventing another total economic collapse.  Yes our national debt expanded greatly, but better that than the alternative (see above).  President Obama is a courageous man by being our President in a time of economic crisis and knowing that getting our county back on track would be a herculean task.  Pres. Obama could have waited to run for office at a time when times are better, yet he chose the time he did knowing full well that anything he would do would be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario.  If that isn't political courage, I don't know what political courage means.