“The Past Is Behind, Learn from It. The Future Is Ahead, Prepare for It. The Present Is Here, Live It.”

House Speaker John Boehner claims the Republican party got 98% of what it wanted out of the infuriating and trivial debt-ceiling deal. Really? Nobody likes this deal. Democrats hate it, the Tea Party faction of the Republicans hates it, and Ron Paul and Paul Krugman agree that the deal sucks, albeit for different reasons.

"The ‘cuts’ being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases,” wrote Paul.

And Krugman used this analogy: "...those demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who treated the sick by bleeding them, and thereby made them even sicker."

According to the Macroeconomic Advisers (http://www.macroadvisers.com/), the deal might shave one tenth of 1% off annual growth over the next decade. The Republicans threatened to have the country default on our debts and caused a downgrade in our credit rating for that?

So what is Boehner so pleased about?

Republicans like to pretend that more federal regulations under President Obama and taxes are behind the lousy economy and slow job growth. This is a blatant prevarication. Even David Frum, the conservative columnist and a former special assistant to President George W. Bush recently noted that new federal regulations under Obama have been insignificant in number and there have been no new tax increases on businesses put forth by the Obama administration.

So, the Republicans are completely resistant to new or more government spending, but have submitted no alternative policy to what comes from the White House or the left side of the aisle. Clinging to trickle-down economics is not a plan. Despite campaign assertions to the contrary, Obama has not raised taxes on those making over $250,000 per year, so where are all the jobs that are created by letting them stay at the Bush tax rates?

The Republicans picked up a huge number of seats in 2010 election, but they have done nothing with them. A CBS News/New York Times poll at the end of June stated that the issue of jobs and the economy should be priority number one - more than half of those polled identified this as the most pressing issue. The country's debt, one of the favorite issues of the Tea Party, ergo, now the Republicans, was of concern to only 7% of those who responded.

This deal didn't create a single job, except to get me to come back to my blog - and I don't get paid.

Title quote is from Thomas S. Monson