Remember how Republicans told us that the reason businesses haven’t been hiring for the past five years is because of uncertainty?  Uncertainty over how much their taxes were going to be, they said.  Then it was uncertainty about how the ACA (affectionately known as Obamacare) was going to impact their business. 

Demand shemand.  Nothing to do with demand, they said. Nothing to do with the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the fact that more people have less money to spend, that unemployment is still too high, that government has laid off close to a million people.  (Don’t forget, government doesn’t create jobs.)

So what does the Republican Party do to instill confidence?  They shut down the government and threaten to default on our debt.  Remember our debt?  That was supposed to be the biggest problem we have here in the good ole U-S-of-A.  And what would be guaranteed to increase our debt?  Well, if our political system looks so unstable that U.S. Treasuries no longer look like a safe bet.  Then, investors start demanding higher interest rates to compensate for the increased risk.  Then the costs of our debt starts to skyrocket. (Read more about the effects of the shutdown here.)

The only thing the Republican Party is certain about is that they’re right.  That they’re the true Americans — white, wealthy, weligious (Okay, so I couldn’t come up with a third “w” – pretend I’m Elmer Fudd.)

It’s time to dispel the myth that the Republican Party is the fiscally responsible party and Democrats are the profligate, spendthrift children who never saw a social program they didn’t like. Mythology aside, what, I ask, is wrong with social programs?  Isn’t the well-being of its people the primary mission of any government?