Thursday, July 14, 2011

Advice on the Debt Limit from the Mayor of La La Land

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has issued a statement on the Federal debt limit. It is titled: The Importance of Increasing the Federal Debt Limit

The first paragraph of the three paragraph statement reads:
Our government needs to do what families across America have done since this recession began – solve its financial problems and start living within its means. As a nation, it is imperative that we get our finances under control, reduce our deficit, and work to fix the country’s long-term financial problems.
Does the Mayor not realize that raising the debt limit is the opposite of "living with in [our] means"?

That "families across America...solve their financial problems" by cutting back on spending, not by borrowing more?

Does he realize that everything he is advocating calls for no extension of the debt limit, despite the fact that in the headline to the statement he calls for an extension of the debt limit?

4 comments:

  1. Maybe he's retarded.

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  2. Good work, Antonio: critizing the federal government's management of its finances just hours after Moody's downgraded your city's debt. In politics as in life, timing is everything.

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  3. "Our government needs to do what families across America have done since this recession began– solve its financial problems and start living within its means."

    This type of statement is often criticized as a 'Composition Falacy' by Krugmanites.
    Bob, I'd very much appreciate it if someone of your intelectual caliber with your platform would demolish this criticizm.

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  4. "Our problem is, we made a big deal about this for three months," Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told The New York Times, illustrating the difficult position in which senior Republicans find themselves.

    "How many Republicans have been on TV saying, 'I am not going to raise the debt limit,'" Graham told the newspaper, including himself among the GOP members dealing with the seemingly no-win situation. "We have no one to blame but ourselves."

    "Let's stop the posturing and positioning, stop catering to the political base and let's start compromising," Mr. Obama told the lawmakers at the White House, according to people who were in the room.


    Now all those in favor of taking Leslie Graham out to the woodshed...and burying him there say, "Aye".

    The motion carries...

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