President Bush and the debt ceiling

Kudos to Al Godinez for inspiring me to write this letter. Says he: “ ... the GOP raised the U.S. debt ceiling seven times during the G.W. Bush administration. That was after Bush totally trashed the surplus that President Clinton’s administration had left in place ...”

Yes, then-President Bush did raise the debt ceiling. Why do you think the tea party was organized? Because a lot of Republicans in power, just like President Bush, didn’t get the message about controlling government spending.

And as for “ ... the surplus that President Clinton’s administration had left in place ...” well, how about telling us precisely how much he “left in place.” I’m betting that you can’t, because that “surplus” was a projected one. It was not already in the bank.

Most importantly, to me, anyway, is your statement about “ ... paying for wars that a GOP president brought on ...”

Wrong again. If any President “brought on” this war, it was President Clinton. Remember the “Black Hawk Down” incident? I firmly believe that he was unnerved by the newsreels showing some of our dead combat troops being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, and he was unable to act decisively ever after.

We and/or our allies were attacked constantly for the rest of his time in office, and he did little more than toss out empty threats of retaliation for those attacks. Not only did the attacks continue, but they got worse, even up to the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Not once did he do anything of import to deter further attacks, and nine months after he left office, we were blessed with the events of 9/11, so don’t tell me about a war brought on by the GOP.

Now we have another Democrat in power, and he hasn’t pulled us out of the Middle East yet, has he? Matter of fact, he’s escalated things over there. Whatever happened to “hope and change?” Looks to me as though not much has changed, and there’s little hope that it will for the foreseeable future.

John Babush

Big Rock