Four words: Thank God For Twitter.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big fan of the politics. People at work will mention political issues to get me amped up just to watch me rant for hours. It makes the office more fun and, honestly, I enjoy making people laugh anyway. Lately there has been a lot of talk about the United States’ credit rating. As it turns out, even with a $14 trillion debt, our credit is actually rated “AAA”. This from my understanding is the best credit money can buy.
You may be wondering, for your own personal reasons, how does one obtain perfect credit? Well I can’t tell you the exact numbers because I’m not as smart as our government but from what I read on President Obama’s twitter, you have to follow these three simple guidelines:
- You must spend more than you make.
- You must borrow enough to pay back what you want to borrow in the future.
- You must get people to spend more by taking their money away.
And that is how you do it! If you follow this plan, which I’ve given you for free, you will have perfect credit.
And Then I Screwed It Up!
One day last week my United States Congressman, was on twitter. I started tweeting him using much the same tone and terminology that I do around the office when my co-workers laugh at me. NO MORE DEBT! CUT SPENDING! I violently urged him. LOWER TAXES FOR ALL! I continued. You see, whenever I had contacted my representatives in the past, I never got anything but a form letter back from an intern or perhaps a page boy. I never actually got a personalized response at all. Maybe that was because in the past I always lived in large metropolitan areas. Now, I live in the boondocks and my rep is a rep for a lot of, lets just say, farm types who get sunburns on their necks from toiling in the fields all day. These are people who feed America and don’t have time to waste on silly things like politics and twitter. I’m assuming he doesn’t get a lot of tweets (or maybe he does and just has a lot of time to respond) but lo and behold I started getting responses. His first response (which I should have taken as a warning) simply stated “Thanks, that means a lot to me.”
This was the warning flag that he was listening. I had never felt so close to the supreme power of Washington so I tweeted him more. This time about the great show Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Again, he responded “Its must see TV.” The power was going to my head. I started tweeting more and more, the same things over and over “NO DEBT. CUT SPENDING. LOWER TAXES!” Eventually, I got a tweet back that simply said “amen.”
The Fun Was Over
And so it came to pass that the debt deal went to a vote. My Congressman had voted the way I urged him to, “NO!” After his vote was cast the country cheered. They celebrated for exactly an hour and then it all came tumbling down. The Dow Jones index dropped nearly 1,000 points in a matter of days, our credit rating fell to AA+ and the Chinese spoke out against The United States of America for borrowing too much money without the ability to pay it back. Now millions of Americans would check their 401(k) and see massive losses, people would lose their jobs and the Chinese would surely never let Google operate unfiltered in their country again. It was everything President Obama said it would be if it didn’t pass. All because of my tweets to my congressman who was so nice to vote the way I had asked him to.
You may be asking yourself, “Didn’t the deal pass?” Yes. It passed and despite everything but I still can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for the country’s budget problems.
