Unless the agreed-upon budget bill fails to pass on a vote in the coming days, the next big showdown will very likely be over raising the national Debt Ceiling. I know that a lot of people were disappointed in the small gains in spending reductions and cuts achieved in friday night's last minute agreement for fiscal 2011 between the House and the Senate, I was disappointed as well that it didn't go further. However, this was a proving ground of sorts, like a test firing range to sharpen the targeting skills of the troops and to see how far we could get without having to shut down the operation. I think Boehner and the fiscal conservatives learned something important. There were two very distinctly opposed positions and two very different sets of tactical measures employed. Harry Reid and his constituents and fellow Democrats dusted off the old manual on how to defeat Republicans and started laying their old surplus mines. The problem is that their manual is decades behind times and does not see the new problems facing our nation in the same way the rest of the country does. To the Democrats, it's all about preserving the old fortress in DC against an invasion of reformers who want to change the inbred failed processes.
 
But we know this mine field the Democrats have laid.  We've been through it before, and we have the map.  We can just walk right around it if we have the stomach to really engage this fight.  The old anti-personel mines of "Republicans Are Against Women", "Republicans Want To Starve Seniors", "Republicans Want Old People To Die"... are duds and well-defined duds at that, and we can simply step right over them because we have a vision that is greatly clarified and we have tanks with canons aimed squarely at the debt crisis and tax burdens faced by our nation.  When the people support a war effort, the warriors are emboldened and strengthened, and the great majority support this war effort against the destruction of our country's future solvency.

Our Republican congressmen need to learn from this previous battle over the budget, and come out stronger than before, understanding that the vast majority of the nation will stand behind them only when they are willing to fight without compromise against the crushing debt our government continues to mount, and to remember always that "we the people" are at ground-zero in this war. If they fail, we feel it here, and our children will feel it doubly hard down the road.
 
- Mike Silverman , Milford MA