I missed the GOP debate last night.

I meant to watch it, but something else got in the way, I think it was the sunset or something.

But I remembered it when I got up this morning and thought I would put in a couple of cents worth of my opinion.

The last time we had a Republican president - George W Bush - here are some figures that should be of interest. He took over from Bill Clinton (Democrat) who left office with a budget SURPLUS!!! Unheard of. He also had in place a plan to pay off the National Debt within 10 years. Bush immediately sent everyone in the country a check for $300 (Remember his promise, "If you vote for me I will send everyone $300.00."?)

The Dow Industrial Average was 14,000 when Bush came in to office. It was 6,000 when he left. (It is now 12,000)

Gas was $1.25 when Bush came in and $4.10 when he left. (It is now $3.50)

The National Debt was $5.7 Trillion when he came in and $10.7 Trillion when he left - almost DOUBLE.(It is now $14 Trillion, a long way from double, and not even as much as Bush added to it)

The reason for such a disaster? He gave RICH people a HUGE tax cut - at least $1.3 Trillion, cut taxes to Big Business, gave free drugs to senior citizens and started two wars. He did all of these things and made NO provision to pay for ANY of them!

That was his huge failure, no provision to pay for any of his largesse. If you cut taxes in one area (Say to your rich friends) then you need to raise taxes on another sector (As the Republicans want to do - on the poor and the middle classes.) or you need to cut expenses elsewhere. (As the Republicans want to do by cutting services to the poor and the middle classes.

Bush cut taxes to the rich, on the theory that it would get the economy going again. It's been more than 10 years now and it has not worked. It never worked when tried in the past. The only thing that happens is that the very wealthy get even wealthier and the poor and middle class get poorer. Oh yes, and the greedy Politicians get rich too from a grateful bunch of rich people!

One final rant. The income gap in the US is bigger than it has EVER been, and not just here in the US but ANYWHERE, in other words the income gap HERE, in the US, NOW, is bigger than it has ever been at any time anywhere, including anywhere in the entire World!! The rich are richer than they have ever been at any time in our history AND they pay less in taxes than they have ever paid at any time in our history!! They pay less in taxes than you and I pay!! The top 1% to 2% in the US pay only 16% of their income in taxes while the average American pays 30% of their income in taxes!!!!! What kind of sense does that make? AND THE CONSERVATIVES WANT TO CUT TAXES TO THE RICH EVEN MORE!! They want to cut them even further! Insanity. These people are already obscenely rich and we want to give them even more of our money to make them even richer. Are we mad?