Let Them Eat Dog Food

“Let them eat cake.”

That’s the infamous phrase commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette, wife of the fabulously wealthy French King Louie XVI, that got their royal heads chopped off during the French Revolution while the common people were starving because the ruling class had all the money. It represents perfectly the utter arrogance of the monarchy and obliviousness of the ruling class to the suffering of the common people.

Two centuries have passed since then yet it appears that little has changed in the attitudes of governments and the ruling class toward their sheep.

Today, figuratively speaking, Jacob Lew, Treasury Secretary of the United States under the feckless Obama administration is saying the very same kind of thing to the nation’s vulnerable sick and old people living on Social Security, Medicare, as well as other low level commoners with respect to the looming government shutdown:

“Let them eat dog food.”

This top cabinet level government parasite delivered a stern warning to Congress last week about the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling, saying that Medicare, Social Security, and military veteran’s checks will likely be first on the government chopping block if the debt ceiling deadline is missed.

His remarks are meant to scare the daylights out of old and sick people so that they will prevail upon their congressmen and senators to cave in to the president’s heavy handed demand to raise the debt ceiling without cutting more and more spending.

He’s deliberately and cynically targeting vulnerable defenseless elderly people who have worked hard all their lives; folks who were forced by government laws into the Social Security and Medicare schemes whether they liked it or not; people who deserve every dime of those retirement benefits, and now are stuck with it as the only means with which to fund their meager health, living and financial needs as they approach the end of their lives.

"Under any scenario, we will be defaulting on obligations," Lew said.

But Lew and the rest of the top government parasites won’t have to worry about their paychecks. The bond holders who hold the massive government debt instruments won’t have to worry about their interest payments. All the grasping foreign nations and their parasite rulers who gobble up $billions in American foreign aid every year, year after year, won’t have to worry about their loot.

Virtually every fat-assed freeloader who currently feeds at the government trough will continue to feed there as usual.  It is only the old, the sick and the vulnerable Americans who will suffer.

"We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt, even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact," says Credit-rating agency Moody's in a recent report. Moody's explained that the Treasury Department would find a way to pay interest on its debt above all else. "The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury's extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default."

"The United States should not be put in a position of making such perilous choices for our economy and our citizens," Lew whined. But he conveniently omits the fact that the United States would not be in this position had it not been for the parasite political class spending and borrowing and then spending and borrowing more and more as if the money supply were endless and no extravagance were too much.

The United States government credit card has been maxed out for decades now. But instead of reducing the outrageous spending, balancing the budget and otherwise acting responsibly to get the financial situation under control, it just keeps demanding over and over again that the credit limit be raised, and Congress has caved in every time because Congress is addicted to the drug of recklessly spending money.

The old folks on Social Security and Medicare didn’t get our country into this mess. Far from it.; they are the responsible trusting citizens who paid taxes all their lives, obeyed the government’s laws and lived frugally within their means.

So now Treasury Secretary Lew is saying that their government is going to fuck them over like a bunch of dupes:

“Let them eat dog food.”