I haven’t written much recently because national politics, at least on the Republican side, have become so bizarre it is difficult to have a rational conversation with folks who take such great pride in being irrational.

An item came through my email recently, however, that illustrates the sorry state of our national discourse.

I received a communication from our very own back-bench legislator, Jim Baird.

Understand, I don’t think old Jim penned the passage I’m about to quote. More than likely, what I am about to quote probably comes from a wordsmith in the pay of the Grand Old Party distributed to loyal legislators to be disseminated to the folks back home, who, it appears, are assumed to be clueless. Since Congressman Baird put his name to the piece, he bears responsibility for its content.

The allegation in question goes as follows: “After creating one of the largest spending packages in U.S. history, liberals decided to raise the debt limit again. As a father and a grandfather, I am deeply concerned about the lasting impact tacking trillions of dollars onto an already spiraling national debt and the burden future generations will face because of liberals’ wasteful spending.”

This is intentional misinformation. In polite Washington society, some might go so far as to call it a prevarication. Out here in the soybean belt, some might call it a bare-faced lie.

Raising the debt limit authorizes the payment of debts that have already been incurred. It is not new money. It covers money that already has been spent. In addition, it authorizes payment of other regular recurring expenses such as Social Security benefits for the disabled and retired among us and the paychecks of our brave men and women in the military.

If the debt limit is reached, the Treasury will be without authority to borrow the money needed to write checks to cover the nation’s existing obligations. If the country defaults in payment of these past debts, it would be the first default in United States history. Our international credit rating would take a hit. The stock market would probably take an even greater hit. The country would be plunged into a recession – or worse.

Since the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, the convulsion would undoubtedly have worldwide implications. Through significant machinations in Congress, we pulled back from that brink just this last week, but from all I can tell, we’ll be back on that precipice come December.

All the dire consequences noted above would happen because Jim Baird and his fellow travelers refuse to make payments on a cumulative national debt that increased by more than a third during, you guessed it, the four years of the late unlamented Trump administration. (To put that in context, historians tell us the national debt has gone up and down – mostly up – since the colonists borrowed money to finance the Revolutionary War.)

The Republicans are trying to lay the groundwork for a 2022 election lie, namely that the Democrats in 2021 raised the debt limit to cover their own spending when in fact much of the spending being covered is that incurred by the prior administration.

Certainly, the Democrats have their own spending plans, but those dollars are to be spent in the future. The current debt limit covers debts undertaken in the past.

Democrats must take responsibility for their own spending, but not that of the previous administration.

It is heartwarming to know that Grandpa Baird is so concerned about those future generations being saddled with all this additional debt. It didn’t seem to bother him while he sat on his hands as the former president added $7.8 trillion to the debt that is now on the books and his Republican Congress enacted tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the ultra-wealthy and cut the revenue needed to cover that spending (taxes being the other way to pay the bills).

Baird’s intentional misrepresentation, unfortunately, is not all that unusual in this dark era when misdirection, misrepresentation, and lies appear to be coin of the realm for today’s GOP.

Hopefully Americans are smarter than Jim Baird and his ghost writer give them credit for being.

This remains to be seen.