Senator John Kerry (D-Mass) showed up on ‘Meet The Press’ today to lay the blame for our economic mess right on the shoulders of the Tea Party. According to Kerry, “it’s a partial wake-up call. I believe this is, without question, the Tea Party downgrade. This is the Tea Party downgrade because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal, to do $4.7 trillion, $4 trillion, have a mix of reductions and reforms in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and realize we needed to do some revenue. I think this is one of the most telling, important moments in our country’s history right now. We have had a fairly straight forward economic road throughout the 20th century. Now, about a financial crisis and structure of our economy, which really has been misallocating capital. We have an enormous amount of capital going into arbitration these last years, phony deals, commissions, not making jobs. The real problem with our country is not the short-term debt. We can deal with that. It’s the long-term debt of Social Security, Medicare ad Medicaid measured against the demographics of our nation. That then juxtaposed to the lack of jobs and job creation and growth. That’s our problem, structural. And what we need is a Washington that stops this bickering.” Later in the interview Kerry takes a shot at Senator John Boehner accusing him of politicizing the downgrade to his advantage. Kerry said, “Let’s get rid of the hard positions that I noticed even in Speaker Boehner’s comments about the downgrade, politicizing it in the sense of sort of blaming it on the Democrats and lack of positions. Barack Obama put a $4.7 trillion deal on the table. Three times he was refused that deal! Because there were some people in the Republican Party, and Mitch McConnell even admitted this, who wanted to default. He said there were people in the party willing to shoot the hostage. In the end, they found the hostage was worth ransoming. It’s not about ransom. it’s about our nation, our country, statesmanship. I know John McCain and many of his colleagues in the Senate are willing to sit down and be serious about how to deal with this quickly. Our nation’s security and future is at stake.”
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