True. They want everyone else to change. I live in a district in Texas where I cannot stand my representatives but they gets reelected every year. But hey, this is Texas and I'm not a neocon or libertarian so I don't fit in.
Well, even in a place like Texas you'll have situations where the districts make it impossible for anyone to challenge. And it's not unheard of to have say a +10 Dem district that votes a Republican into office again and again because he's been a Congressman (or Senator) for 20 years.
My Congressman seems to be a nice enough guy the two times I met him and I'd never vote for him, but his district is drawn so it cuts across three Democratic counties so he gets all the Republicans in those counties. (And the Dems are all thrown into basically 50-50 districts.)
The ballot access laws are really rigged against actual third parties. Along with the campaign finance, gerrymandering, etc. It's one reason I try to encourage people at least here in Michigan to vote third party for the highest race on the ballot. Every vote they get counts towards their future ballot status. Last time I voted I did so for the Constitution Party (U.S. Taxpayers Party) because they were the only one who were not guaranteed ballot status for the next election. I can't speak to other states, but it's one way to have your vote count in Michigan.
It's futile of course, but small victories.
why is the debt a massive problem again?
Not to get into a whole massive debate, but basically it devalues everything.
The one comfort I have is that the American economy is so large, and everyone so much worse and dependent that we can still make a soft landing. Doesn't mean I enjoy the current debt or the future debt that looks insane.
But again I'm in that libertarian/Austrian/Hayek/etc. camp, so feel free to just ignore.
Oops, sorry PD, was writing this post while you made yours:
in terms of overall debt, it pretty much fixes itself if congress does nothing - ie let the Bush tax cuts expire and draw down the wars. Some argue this isn't the time to raise taxes on people though, so the Bush tax cuts won't go anywhere for awhile; the CBO just reported that they'll cost 3 trillion dollars from now until 2021.
Actually the debt can't be addressed by rolling back the Bush tax cuts. Even if we confiscated all the income in the country we couldn't cover the outstanding debt. The debt from Medicare alone is estimated between $40-100 trillion. And that's in a best case scenario.
I think we can do a lot to push that debt farther down the road, even without raising taxes too much or substantially cutting programs, but I simply don't see the political will for it.
(If you meant the deficit, ignore this comment. For five years or so.)
