Debt crisis may be averted

COLUMBUS: It ain’t easy writing a column when the news is changing by the minute. It appears, as we turn out the lights tonight, that Harry Reid and John Boehner have concocted a bill that the President won’t veto.

President Obama gave a short speech on this compromise bill to raise the debt ceiling to around $17 Trillion. He said he wants more taxes on the rich and that we will have the “lowest level of annual domestic spending since Eisenhower was president.”

Nobody knows for sure what’s in this bill so it may wind up with more taxes. But anyone who lived through the 1950s will be shocked to hear that federal spending is lower today. I looked it up. The highest budget under Ike was less than $0.1 Trillion. During his 8 years the total debt increased by $25 Billion to a whopping $0.29 Trillion in 1960. Of course the population has doubled, but we’re spending as much in week as Eisenhower did in a year. We’ll add as much federal debt in the month of August as the country did in our first 180 years.

Budget arguments are nothing new. “Every statesman wants to vote appropriations, but is afraid to vote taxes. The oratory of Washington is on “reconstruction,” but the heart of Washington is on (the next election). We never will get anywhere with our finances till we pass a law saying that every time we appropriate something we got to pass another bill along with it stating where the money is coming from.” (1932)

I sure hope they settle this mess by August 2 so the President (and the rest of us) can enjoy his 50th birthday party in Chicago August 3. Cake for everybody.

This is my 666th Weekly Comments, and I hope we’re all still around for #667.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers: (from Weekly Article #666)

Well all I know about dogs is not much, but in Alaska there is an awful lot of dependence put in dogs. Of course the plane has diminished the dog travel a lot but still the backbone of the Arctic is a dog’s backbone. I met up there, just as I was leaving Fairbanks, that famous musher and dog race winner, Seppala. He become immortal on that famous drive with the (diphtheria) serum to Nome (in 1925)… Seppala is as identified with dogs as Mae West is with buxomness…
Well I dident have long to talk to him that morning, as we was trying to get off, and the river was narrow and many bends and Wiley was afraid that with a full load of gas that we might have some difficulty in taking off, so we had some gas sent out to a lake about 50 miles out, and then flew there and loaded up and took off. We were headed at the time for Point Barrow the furtherest north of any piece of land on the North American Continent…
Joe Crosson the ace pilot that we were with so much in Fairbanks, an old friend of Wiley’s, has a mine and we went out there. He has a partner, a Swedish fellow, that runs it and he had just killed a bear right at his house door. And the Swedish fellow tells how Mickey (his wirehaired fox terrier) went out one night and run the bear in. Well as a matter of fact Mickey went out and the bear chased him in, and Earnest had to shoot the bear to keep him from running Mickey under the bed. They say there is more fellows been caught by a bear just that way. An old pet dog jumps the bear and then they hike straight to you, and the bear after ’em, and the first thing you know you got a bear in your lap, and a dog between your feet. There is two kinds of bear dogs: the ones that drive ’em away and the ones that bring ’em in. Little Mickey thought he had done it (because) Earnest said he chewed all the hair off the bear, after death.” WA #666 (This unfinished article was in Will’s typewriter when the plane crashed near Pt. Barrow, August 15, 1935)