by Greg Palast
exclusive for Truthout/Buzzflash.com
Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist gave debtors’ prison a bad rap. Too bad. I’d say that locking away GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a penitentiary for deadbeats seems like a darn good idea.

Let’s talk about how we ended up in this pickle, bucking up against the “debt ceiling.” From 2001 to 2008, a Republican President took an annual surplus of $86 billion left for him by Bill Clinton and ran up the budget deficit to over half a trillion in a year ($642 billion in 2008). Altogether, George W. Bush blew up the national debt by over $3 TRILLION–then left the bills to Barack Obama.Greg Palast.