on two strikes for Congress

After the debate has settled down on the Debt Crisis, maybe Congress will begin to consider that it left important parts out of two pieces of legislation: the health bill and the treaty on the debt. (I call it a treaty because there was a war going on there between the corporatocracy and the people and the corporatocracy won. Someday the Supreme Court is going to have to change that more than a century ruling that makes a corporation equal to me and other individual people for political and other purposes when it is obvious they are not; people must take responsibility for their actions--corporations do not). Going back to the two strikes: On the health bill, Congress failed to include a public option. Instead, as it did with Medicare drug negotiations, it left things up to the private side of our world and we're going to get stuck with the costs. The pharmaceutical companies make big bucks on us older folks because Medicare cannot negotiate lower prices. And in the debt treaty Congress omitted raising taxes on people making more than $200,000/$250,000. What nobody seems to recognize is that taxes are what makes the government run. In the "Good Old 'Golden' Ages", tariffs paid for much of the government. Today, with free trade, tariffs don't bring in enough to do the job. (An increase in tariffs in 1930 is considered one cause of the depth of the Great Depression). So taxes were developed on income. And payroll taxes have been contentious since. But raising taxes would be less disastrous to the national economy than cutting benefits or payrolls to government employees and those who get federal tax money. To bring the economy back, we need to have people buying things. Only when the demand increases and consumers have to wait too long for service does a business person consider adding to payroll. Any business person who depends on his or her tax bill to determine when to hire and fire will be out of business sooner rather than later. We need the government spending. And if paying the debt then requires tax increases, so be it. The way it is now, only the common person will suffer as he did before the 1930s.