By Craig Andresen

On Friday, August 5^th 2011, for the first time in history, the United States credit rating was downgraded. This unprecedented event will have political ripples as well as consumer ripples. This IS a serious event and the current administration KNOWS it despite their actions.

Before we get to the dodge and weave being suggested by many pundits, in regard to how Obama should react to this news, we should look at what this means to the average American consumer.

If you have a mortgage, a car loan, or you’re thinking of such in the near future, expect to pay a higher interest rate. Those who have a locked in mortgage are safe in that regard but those with variable rate mortgages, will find their interest rates going up.

Those with mortgages or loans are not the only ones who will have their cost of living go up…we all will. Businesses who have loans on their businesses, property loans or vehicle loans or equipment loans or who will be needed those things in the future WILL be paying higher interest for them and they WILL pass that extra cost on to the consumer.

That means if you intend to purchase anything from a loaf of bread to pair of slacks…expect those prices to rise. Rising prices will have a ripple effect all their own. As the cost of living goes up, consumers will have less disposable income. Less disposable income means less spending and that will further slow an already sluggish economy.

To say the U.S. economy is sluggish already is a gross understatement.

Add to all of this, and what is being presented here is a simplified version admittedly, the added oncoming costs to businesses of Obamacare over the next couple of years. The ripple effect there is that hiring will remain low and it is quite likely that unemployment will rise between now and the 2012 elections. Added Obamacare costs will also be passed along to consumers by businesses as yet another ripple effect causing yet more of a downturn in spending spreading more ripples throughout the economic future.

If you think the last couple of days on Wall Street were bad…chances are…you ain’t seen NOTHING yet and as 401K’s drop, investments drop, selling will ramp UP and buying will drop like a stone.

Ripple after ripple overlapping ripple after ripple and on and on it goes.

More examples could well be given here but you get the point. The outlook is not rosy. It’s bleak.

Now, the political end of the spectrum.

Liberals will do everything they can for the next 15 months to paint the conservatives, the republicans and more than any other entity, the Tea Party as the culprits in this fiasco/economic disaster. They have already started. They have labeled the Tea Party as hostage takers, terrorists, suicide bombers, anarchists, vampires and more.

One should ask, why did they start this line of attack days BEFORE the downgrade? Simple…they knew it was coming and clearly, their rhetoric was a preemptive strike.

The fact is plainly clear that liberals have no one to HONESTLY blame but Obama and Obama HONESTLY has no one to blame but himself but then, honesty is rarely a part of the liberal political talking points.

The blame is squarely on the shoulders of the democrats regardless of what they have said or will say over the months leading to the election. S&P for all their faults, and there are many, had to have taken several things into account in making their decision to downgrade the United States credit rating for the first time in history.

Among those things would be the fact that this administration has for more than 825 days, FAILED to pass a budget. Not only have they failed to pass one, the democrats have failed to even PRESENT one. Yes Obama offered a budget, if you can call it that, which was defeated 97-0. The republican House offered a Path to Prosperity budget which the democrat senate rejected. No budget…no clear plan of spending and THAT weighs on the S&P decision.

In the debt talks over the last several weeks, the republicans of the House offered Cut Cap and Balance…which the democrats promptly TABLED not even allowing it to see the light of day on the Senate floor much less a vote. The republicans in the House then offered the Boehner plan which ALSO was promptly tabled and not given a vote by the democrats in the Senate.

Did the democrats of the Senate offer any plan at all? Finally, they tossed up the Reid plan which FAILED to get the necessary votes even in the democrat controlled Senate to pass on a straight majority vote much less the 60 votes it would have needed.

DEMOCRATS killed 2 republican plans and failed to pass their OWN plan and THAT TOO would have weighed on the S&P decision to downgrade our credit rating.

The plan that WAS finally passed, the ONLY plan which democrats agreed to fell far short of what S&P has stated it needed in regard to spending cuts. S&P said 4 trillion and the democrats would ONLY agree to 2.4 trillion in cuts.

Further, in the plan which was passed, a PASSAGE of a balanced budget amendment is NOT mandatory before the second tronch of debt ceiling raise goes into effect. No mandatory balanced budget amendment early in the process would indicate to those making the downgrade decision that long term thinking was not being employed. REMEMBER that the INCLUSION of the balanced budget amendment was a KEY point in the DEMOCRAT reasoning to KILL Cut Cap and Balance AND the first Boehner bill.

Throughout the entire process Obama lectured the congress, lectured the American people, called for tax hikes, harped on corporate jet owners and offered no plan whatsoever. His administration engaged in rhetoric and name calling, the killing of budgets and proposals and yet offered no leadership whatsoever.

At one point, when he actually DID engage in discussions, Obama, reportedly, was asked to LEAVE the room so others in the talks MIGHT actually do something…SOMETHING…constructive.

As soon as the deal was signed, Obama headed off to Chicago for a fund raising birthday dinner and announced his plans to tour the Midwest by bus campaigning for reelection. He even stated in a speech that when he said “Change” he didn’t mean change today…or change tomorrow.

In HIS own words, “We knew this was going to take time because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.”

This downgrade, this economic mess, this, whatever you wish to call it is EXACTLY, I submit, what Obama and his administration and those who pull their strings have been hoping for, wanting and working toward. THEY WANT economic disaster. THEY WAT all these ripple effects. Why? Simple. Their ideology is to create a nation which is FORCED to depend on GOVERNMENT for EVERYTHING. In their world, if government can be put in a position to supply everything from food stamps (usage of which is now at an all time high by the way) to medical care, to unemployment and on and on, then, and ONLY then, can GOVERNMENT dictate to the PEOPLE their every move.

IF our economy was strong…IF our credit rating remained at AAA status, IF unemployment was low…IF gas prices were low, IF investments were increasing…would government be in a position to dictate terms of everyday life to the people? Would government be able to create an entitlement society?

No. HELL no.

The ONLY way THAT would be possible is with a complete economic collapse and THIS is exactly how such a collapse BEGINS and for it to happen this quickly it MUST be engineered.

Liberals will, without a shadow of a doubt, rile at this line of thought and be dismissive of it claiming anyone who would begin to espouse such ideas is clearly insane but it is THEIR candidate, Obama, who decries “…this big, messy, tough democracy” as a primary stumbling block to his vision AND…just received the endorsement of the COMMUNIST PARTY USA for reelection.

Pundits on the right are calling for Obama to accept the resignation of Tim Geithner over this shameful downgrade. I believe this is the wrong thing to do. First, and importantly, Geithner offered to resign days BEFORE the downgrade was announced. What did he know and when did he know it? It seems obvious that Geithner KNEW this was coming and I submit if HE knew…so did Obama.

IF Obama accepts a resignation from Geithner it provides Obama with yet another scapegoat. If Obama FIRES Geithner… scapegoat. I believe the resignation of Tim Geihtner is again forthcoming and this time WILL be accepted because, if Geithner is allowed to stay…that’s a roadblock in Obama’s reelection bid.

Using Geithner as a scapegoat will allow Obama to attempt to deflect blame but republicans must not allow that to go unchallenged. A Geithner resignation will do nothing to ease the ripple effect nor will it have any effect on what has already occurred. Should Obama resign over this? How about Reid, Pelosi, Biden and all democrats complicit in this debacle? Some, no doubt, would like to see that but it would put the nation on a very slippery slope in both domestic and foreign policy as any perceived stability of the united States would completely vanish.

Are the democrats and the Obama administration solely to blame? No. Both parties have for decades been running up the debt but…no administration has run it up faster or more that the Obama administration and it has been the democrats who, even while they controlled all 3 branches, failed to provide a budget and have since blocked any attempt by the republican Tea Party backed freshman class to take substantial steps to avert this crisis.

Economically, bad things have happened and more bad things are going to happen, that much is clear but is this the end of our nation as we’ve known it? No. Should we consider ourselves lucky? Yes…in a way.

We ARE lucky that it has taken until August of 2011 for this to happen BECAUSE that “…big, messy, tough democracy”  got in the way. Now, there is just over a year before the next election and while more damage COULD be done in that time, the 2012 election IS the way OUT of this crisis. Imagine how much worse the outlook or the effect would have been had not republicans taken the House in 2010.

The Tea Party MUST stop blaming those republicans who voted FOR the debt deal and step ever so slightly OFF their ideological turf and realize that without this deal, the outcome would have been exactly what it now IS and that only WITH the deal was there even a CHANCE of staving off the S&P downgrade. In other words, those republicans who voted AYE on the measure were doing all they could to save us from this crisis.

HAD the republicans, all of them, voted NAY…the liberals would SURELY use THAT as ammo saying the Tea Party BLOCKED our only hope. As it stands…it is the DEMOCRATS who blocked any hope of averting the downgrade and regardless of their whining, name calling and rhetoric…THEY MUST BE HELD TO ACCOUNT for it and the ONLY way that will happen is IF the Tea Party becomes cohesive…and FAST!

The Tea Party can NOT afford to spend ANY amount of time, energy or resources trying to find replacements for those some are now referring to as defectors. Instead, they MUST put their strict ideology aside, unite and spend ALL their time, energy and resources into replacing 23 democrat Senators and a socialist President in November of 2012.

THAT would be the ONLY ripple from this boulder of a crisis tossed into the economic pond which would have a positive effect!