Paul Jay, senior editor, TRNN: So what do you make of the great debt ceiling debate?
Dave Swanson, cofounder, War Is A Crime: I think it’s a fraud. You know, we have had this country and other countries in deeper debt before without catastrophe, and the debt ceiling has been raised many times without catastrophe. And I think there’s absolutely no earthly reason to have the debt or the deficit. I think you could allow the so-called Bush tax cuts (I call them the Bush-Obama tax cuts at this point) to expire. You could otherwise tax the rich, as three-quarters of the country wants to do, and fix the problem. You could stop the outrageous spending of seven times the nearest competing nation on the military, as most of this country wants to do, and fix the problem. They don’t want to fix the problem. They want to use this crisis that’s been manufactured as an excuse to go after Social Security and Medicare.