I mentioned this in a comment last evening, but let me just post it here with a link, and make it clear to everyone — including those on our side who somehow abide the McConnell politicking (his plan is now being gleefully pushed by the left, who realizes that the President can always claim that the McConnell plan is what allowed for new spending and a raise in the debt ceiling, meaning he’s banking on the fact that Americans will see the responsibility for new spending as bipartisan) — just who and what we are dealing with. Andrew Stiles, NRO:
In an interview with National Review Online, Senate minority whip Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) explains that even at the height of national concern over the country’s debt and deficit problem, Democratic negotiators are insisting that additional spending measures be included in a deal to increase the debt limit.
In discussions this week, Kyl says, Democrats proposed extending unemployment insurance for another 99 weeks at a cost of $43 billion. In addition, they requested another $10 billion to spend on research projects overseen by the National Institutes of Health. Democrats have not, Kyl says, offered to offset the new spending with additional cuts.
These measures come on top of the increased spending Democrats proposed in negotiations led by Vice President Joe Biden, which included a $33 billion increase in Pell Grant funding and $27 billion — a number Kyl says was never explained and is much higher than Republican estimations — for the so-called “doc fix” to restore Medicare payments to physicians.
Another point of contention in the talks, Kyl explains, is that roughly 75 percent of the “savings” proposed in non-health-care mandatory spending are achieved through revenue mechanisms such as fee increases, which technically aren’t classified as tax hikes, but certainly highlight the Democrats’ fundamental unwillingness to reduce spending. Kyl says at this point he can identify only about $55 billion in actual reductions to federal spending.
When it comes to health care, Kyl says that even the modest savings introduced in the Biden talks, primarily of the “waste, fraud, and abuse” variety — all of it outlined by President Obama in his budget “framework” speech — have since been taken off the table. Republicans can “buy them back,” Kyl explains, if they agree to match them dollar-for-dollar with tax increases. “But we’re just not going to do that,” he says. This is why the top-line figure agreed to in the Biden talks — about $2 trillion — has since shrunk to less than $1.4 trillion. Kyl predicts that as the deal stands, the Congressional Budget Office would score only about $1 trillion of actual savings.
Negotiators are meeting today at the White House. Kyl says he expects the White House will continue to press Republicans to “buy back” health-care savings with tax increases (which isn’t going to happen) and agree to a global “deficit trigger” that would impose automatic spending and tax increases if Congress fails to meet certain targets. This too, Kyl says, is a non-starter with the GOP. He holds out hope that some agreement can be reached on a number for an overall ten-year deficit target and an appropriate enforcement mechanism that does not include tax increases, which continue to be a stumbling block at every turn.
Dudes. Walk. Away. The US credit rating is likely to fall anyway, given the nature of any deal that might be struck, and I suspect that’s precisely what the Marxist-in-Chief wants to see happen — triggering the kind of crisis he and the “progressives” thrive under, willing as they are to manipulate such crises for political gain and power entrenchment.
As I noted last evening, here is what the “negotiations” have come to: at the “debt ceiling” talks, the Democrats are offering spending plans and are holding up the American tax payer by insisting that it will cost him money to cut government waste, fraud, and abuse. And if they don’t get their way, they’ll simply push the McConnell plan — which I’m sure they’ll point out was a Republican plan — that essentially allows the President a $2.5 trillion blank check.
He gets new spending. There are no cuts. And the President can point out that this was McConnell’s idea.
Couple this with Lindsay Graham and John McCain’s shots at Michele Bachmann for wanting to stand firm against a raise in the debt ceiling, and it’s easy to see why this country is so terribly fucked: for the most part, it doesn’t have a political party a majority of whose members actually represent their interests.
Dudes. Walk. Away.
To Canada?
This looks like a major shift to me, though I wonder why is hasn’t come sooner, if that is, the Republicans have always intended to negotiate their way to agreed fiscal spending reductions, while preventing any failure of Treasury payments.
McCain is confusing himself with someone what’s relevant and uncowardly
That eternal vigilance thing turned out to be a bear, didn’t it? Where did we go wrong?
Public education, various
Fake money and cabal banking, 1913
Welfare, ~1930
Social Insecurity, 1935
Medicare, 1965
All this crap, various
We’re bankrupt but how many of these are still sacrosanct to the right? We already know the left is full-on collectivism.
With that as background, how about let’s tolerate what’s in effect a State Press and thereby hang any attempt to rescue this failing little country around Cantor’s neck.
That goes for any agreement whatsoever. So why make one?
JHo, did you catch Paul v. Bernanke on gold? Duh.
I did, Pablo.
Also caught this. I’m not sure what I fear more, the collapse of the giant game of monetary Jenga or finding Paul right all along.
Making one that offsets increases in the debt limit with cut cap and balance and no tax increases seems a good deal.
Isn’t the answer that we’re bound by some ineffable need for justice? And that making payments, whether returning borrowings or paying interest on those borrowings is exemplary of justice? So too with contractual agreements along the lines of payment of wages for service rendered, or payment of billings for goods purchased? I don’t know if the generality is entirely sufficient to explain the purpose of government to start with, but it seems to me it goes pretty far down that road. I mean, the Constitution does begin with a clause reading “. . . in Order to . . . establish justice . . . “
A good deal? Sure. A likely deal? No. The House is not enough, and we’re not going to get anything out of this Senate and this President that is going to look like it’s vaguely related to a good deal. 2012 or bust.
I keep hearing that the cuts — draconian and all that — the GOP wants will, without corresponding increases in “revenue” by way of a raise in tax rates, cause much pain to the economy, for which the GOP will be blamed.
So: they’ll be blamed if they don’t increase the debt limit; they’ll be blamed if taxes aren’t raised; they’ll be blamed if spending IS cut; they’ll be blamed if spending ISN’T cut; and they’ll be blamed if the credit rating agencies downgrade the US credit rating.
Seems like a no-win situation, politically, if we believe what the media is selling us about blame. Why not then do what’s right? Pass a spending bill and let the President worry about cuts. Then, once you’ve shown you’re willing to do so, come back to the table and get cut cap and spend in exchange for debt ceiling increases — and put Obamacare on the table, while you’re at it.
Isn’t that what I’ve been saying all along? Walk. Away.
Do you suppose that at any point (in the near future) we’re going to fail to make those payments?
America is already a lot divorced from justice when it taxes good decent hard-working people to rain money on fat-ass illiterate United Autoworkers what stand around giggling at chevy volts all day.
Not to be glib or go off topic, but if we were — if we were informed, that is, which we resist — we’d be mighty outraged by (referring to Pablo’s link) Bernanke in effect lying to Congress about what Paul rightly observes is the equivalent of seventeen thousand dollars per American household in printing.
And that’s not inflationary. Doesn’t drive the dollar off a cliff.
By way of its effects on each American citizen, the Fed is a monopoly entity with a private agenda running a Ponzi monetary scheme that’s driving the entire American economy. Justice is as much an abstract to us as it is to our power class.
The Constitution requires the service on the debt be paid first. Failure to pay out on SS or Medicare, etc., would be a political decision made by this President. So it will be he who eschews justice. The House is all we have. Use it. These negotiations were unnecessary. Pass the spending bill and then only agree to come to the table once certain baseline stipulations are agreed to.
Any deal should require a budget from the Senate Dems. And Barcky and his bitches should have to put every one of their proposals in writing. So people can see their asshattery.
There are no tax hikes. There are only revenue enhancements that can be achieved by spending cuts in the tax code. (Shoot me now, please.)
That can only be done in the House, which is functionally useless at the end of the day. The GOP cannot force that to happen.
This is not a matter of what they’re willing to do, it’s a matter of what they’re able to do. The willingness must be on the part of the electorate to enable them to do what we’d like them to do. As long as we have Leader Reid and President Obama, we’re shoveling against the tide.
there should be a robust historical record so bumblefuck can get all due credit
It’s looking more and more possible Pablo, though the payments missed won’t be on borrowings and interest but on more mundane business like delaying paying for goods delivered by vendors unpaid or wages owed and the like. In any case, the borrowing and interests owed stand forever in the way of simply renouncing the debt, as happens in bankruptcies. My point wasn’t that these things wouldn’t be paid, but that the whole damn idea of the Constitution stands against the Government of the US committing injustice itself, and particularly doing so knowingly.
Which, by the way, is one reason standing against the growth of Government to a size when utter waste and fraud can occupy an increasing large fragment of the public Treasury and be written off as the (unjust) price of doing such business.
(Which, without enormous reform, itself becomes ruinous just in interest.)
Yes, JHo. But it will force a concomitant cut in spending — and at least hold the line until a conservative can run on real fiscal reform.
Only if he’s been King for the last hundred years, feets.
Indeed, Jeff.
That’s the thing. Baracky’s media will gleefully report his offer of $4T in cuts, while willfully ignoring the fact that no one including Obama knows what they are or how they’d go into effect. But he said a big number, you wingnuts!!!
If they’re going to suck his cock, shouldn’t they have to use a cheesy funk soundtrack over the clips?
And?
I know all that. And I know we only have the House. So why worry about what we can’t do. Do what we can and feel good about having done the right thing.
If he can’t or won’t pay SS or Medicare, it puts the lie to the idea that there’s any “Trust Fund”. That’s a good thing in my opinion.
For the three seconds before the GOP panics and caves like a Florida sinkhole.
…including those on our side who somehow abide the McConnell politicking (his plan is now being gleefully pushed by the left, who realizes that the President can always claim that the McConnell plan is what allowed for new spending and a raise in the debt ceiling, meaning he’s banking on the fact that Americans will see the responsibility for new spending as bipartisan
I’m not so pissy with McConnell over this, at least not at the moment.
It all depends on how the ‘plan’ would play out, y’know… They can call it 80 bazillion dollars in cuts but and it could be $3.27, or they can (hypothetically, at least) call it a trillion in new taxes and just gut the EPA and a bunch of crap… it all depends on the final product that plays out. The talk is just talk and you can’t trust a thing out of any of their mouths.
So no one really knows for certain what the ‘McConnell plan’ is, because it isn’t anything yet but talk subject to change.
But, IF the House is going to squish anyway, it may not be a bad way to squish.
That’s if they’re going to squish anyway though. Better they hold. But if that’s just patently absurd, might as well play those games with it then.
But I do think shorter term agreements are better, and this should come back up in 2012 and beyond absent a real solution.
Just a quibble on my part Entropy, but I don’t think it should ever “go away” to the extent that it has to “come back up”. Just as Obama did with ObamaCare, never once dropping it even in its darkest hour, the R’s should just keep pushing the cut government ball until it wins.
Nope. He laid it out. Now Harry Reid wants to tinker with it a bit, probably to include tax hikes disguised as loophole closures, and then both sides will declare victory.
And no, I don’t think we should play any games at this point. If the House doesn’t hold, we vote every last one in leadership out of office — or we go third party. No more time for this.
YMMV.
As long as we have Leader Reid and President Obama, we’re shoveling against the tide.
Not really.
It actually doesn’t matter what we don’t have, 1 branch of congress is enough. Just as a point of fact – there are things they cannot do without the house and it does not matter if they have the President, the Senate, the Supreme Court and 47 governors on their side.
They were elected to cut spending. Not raising the debt limit forces government to cut spending. All they really HAVE to do is nothing, and they accomplish what they were actually sent to do. Not that they’ll likely do that.
Making one that offsets increases in the debt limit with cut cap and balance and no tax increases seems a good deal.
Walk away. Pass this in the House. The entire dynamic of the debate changes.
A press conference right after Obama’s today pointing out his ridiculous lies would also be a good idea.
Who is going to listen to his prss conference/lecture/campaign speech/flaming sack of lies?
Why Hobbes matters. By way of tweaking Descartes. Not to pick on Hobbes.
If the House doesn’t hold, we vote every last one
in leadershipwho caved in out of officeGranted, the Venn diagram of these two sets may have nearly total overlap.
It still matters. Having the House is like being in the passenger seat of a driver’s training car. You’ve got a brake, but you’re not driving. You can’t turn it around. All you can do is stop them. Which is better than sitting in the back, but it still isn’t enough.
Who is going to listen to his prss conference/lecture/campaign speech/flaming sack of lies?
The filters, who will swallow his bullshit and excrete a sweet, digestable nugget of narrative that they will then feed to the low info voters incessantly.
So the filters are aphids and the low-info voters their herding ants? Ants again. Can we get them chocolate covered?
And no, I don’t think we should play any games at this point. If the House doesn’t hold, we vote every last one in leadership out of office — or we go third party. No more time for this.
Well, that’s fine by me, but that’s a pretty tall order. I am pessimistic but we’ll see.
I really don’t see any permanent fix before November 2012 – I think McConnell is right about that – Obama will never agree to anything remotely sustainable and viable.
So, on account of that belief, I am open to short term compromises that keeps the issue open until it can be put to the electorate to break the impasse, one way or the other.
Someone like Perry maybe? Or Bachmann? They might fix this.
The best you’ll get from Pawlenty/Romney is, I think, a punt.
If Obama wins, then you must bury gold in your backyard and buy a generator and learn a foreign language just in case cuz this ship is going DOWN.
I have really never been a big GOP booster and never endorsed the ‘lesser evil’ strategy, and I have been seen aboard the “teach them a lesson”, “stay home”, “write in Batman” and other assorted bandwagons.
But I have to confess I am at the moment at least, leaning toward having to get Obama out and needing a GOP majority in 2012 as a matter of necessity. Call it one last chance… if the GOP wins and it turns back into 2002-2006, then it becomes imperative to go 3rd party and crush them, even at the cost of giving it back to the dems several cycles over.
I’ve never shyed from that before, but such a thing will take several cycles I think, and we if don’t get Bambi out now I don’t think we have several cycles. Like you say, not much more time.
Practically half of everything Obama is done was all set to take effect after 2012, because it will fucking ruin us. Look at some of the shit that is already passed and goes into effect during his 2nd term. Obamacare is huge, but also crippling EPA rules and shit. If we don’t get him out and get that shit repealed we are fucked.
In that scenario I do not endorse 3rd parties, I endorse abandoning politics all together and suscribing to survivalist type magazines and learning how to trap and dress large rodents.
All you can do is stop them. Which is better than sitting in the back, but it still isn’t enough.
Actually, it’s plenty enough – for now. And I honestly think it might be ‘enough’ flat out.
If we cannot borrow anymore, we must spend our revenue only, we must make cuts to the tune of a trillion a year or something (pretty substantial, more than we’ve ever got), and if we want to borrow for anything new we must make additional cuts to provide for it and back us back off the limit.
Long term, we still have solvency problems with things like Medicare and SS (which SHOULD be fixed permanently), but we do have some time on that, and such a change would buy us more.
It’d be a freaking HUGE step.
Corporate jet owners! Yay! Now we’re getting serious.
FUCK YOU YOU MOTHER FUCKING LYING LIAR WHAT LIES !!!!!!!!!!
If only that were so.
Sorry all, but 3rd parties are a joke.
I will fight tooth and nail againt the sellout RINOs in my party, but seriously, have any of you ever *been* to an American Independent / US Taxpayers / Constitution Party meeting? These people can’t even agree on a common Party name. They are well meaning patriotic people, but they spend their time deciding who will get to be Grand Poobah of their little clubs and never win an office.
The Losertarians are worse, many are liberals who just want “free pot, maaan…”
Other 3rd parties become personality cults that fizzle out when the cult leader dies or is revealed to be flawed. See Perot, Ross.
RhINO hunting is difficult, given primary front loading and incumbency advantages, but at least it has tangible results. 3rd parties are the political equivalent of fantasy football.
Everybody must set aside their politics aside, except for Barcky. Fuck him.
He did not answer Jake Tapper’s question. Even kind of.
The House is just playing politics. If they are not raising taxes, they are not serious.
“I have not seen a credible plan that would allow you to get to $2.7 T without hurting ordinary folks”
So, how do you like my $4T plan? Fucking amateur.
Who is going to listen to his prss conference/lecture/campaign speech/flaming sack of lies?
STOP, JD. There is no point. Like Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews, there is no point in listening. Turn it off. It will make you ill.
Yes he did JD.
Tapper asked “would you commit to specific significant cuts?” Obama, over the course of 5 mins said “No.”
Everybody but Barcky is dug in on their ideological positions and playing politics.
What a fucking liar. Did not pay for wars. Did not pay for tax cuts. Stimulus required.
You don’t pay for tax cuts in any other way than by stopping government spending.
It’s our money, dickhead. Not the government’s.
BUSH DID IT!!!!
Not to mention, this dude is running 3 wars, bought up industries, and nationalized health care as a spanking new entitlement, and how has he “paid” for these things? By spending like a Valley Girl at the Galleria.
He is the honest effortless lying liar and smiles the whole time. FUCK YOU ‘!!!!!!!!!!!
You don’t pay for tax cuts in any other way than by stopping government spending.
It’s our money, dickhead. Not the government’s.
THIS needs to be hammered home again and again.
The lying sack of shit is getting a bit grey. Maybe he should “retire” to “spend more time with his family”. Before January 20, 2013, I mean.
This is all Bush’s fault.
He just claimed to have thick skin. Seriously.
Boehner should pass the 2006 budget today.
Did you like how he glossed over e fact that he voted against this routine measure when Bush was President?
Seriously. The Republican response should be short and sweet: a few months back Obama himself said that raising taxes during a recession is the wrong thing to do, which is why he didn’t do it. Now, he is saying we have to raise money during a recession, which is the right thing to do, which is why he wants to do it. He also said, when Bush was President, that raising the debt limit showed a failure of leadership, which is why he voted against it. Now he’s saying raising the the debt limit is a routine measure, which is why he’s for it.
It seems the President really doesn’t know what all he’s doing — and so he’s just throwing shit up against the wall to see what will stick. Either that, or he’s trying to increase unemployment while driving up debt with more spending that will not be offset by taking away more money from the private sector.
I don’t recall that Draco was well-known for his fiduciary brutality.
He is the most condescending plying prick I can recall.
My way or the highway and ideologically rigid positions is Barcky’s SOP.
POSTURING AND SOUND BITES IS ALL YOU ARE FUCKING DOING YOU LYING PIECE OF SHIT !!!!!!!!
Question – how does your budget that you submitted contribute to this? How does the baselined stimulus money contribute to this? Why are you such a liar?
BIg spending and more government is all you know, idiot.
There are no tax hikes. There are only revenue enhancements through spending cuts in the tax code. Racist.
If following the will of a poll is paramount, why isn’t BarckyCare on the table?
“I’m not going to get into specifics.”
“What should we be doing to win the future?”
Gah.
There are no tax hikes. There are only revenue enhancements through spending cuts in the tax code. Racist.
What is scary is that our most caricatured depictions of the Left’s rehtoric, like this, are in fact the new reality.
Orwell was a prophet. Or perhaps a historian.
The House GOP has called Obama’s bluff, it seems:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-15/house-to-vote-on-2-4-trillion-debt-increase-spending-cuts.html
So they’ve decided to draw the line, and we’ll see what Obama and the Democrat controlled Senate do next week I suppose.
Did y’all miss that one? That there is priceless. “Job killing tax cuts.”
No more fucking study commissions.
None.
Not one.
Period.
Here’s another:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/republicans-call-obamas-bluff-schedule-vote-next-week-deficit-cut-and-cap
Sounds to me like shit just got real…
That’s not bad, considering. This must be left squarely in the laps of Obama and Reid. They must be made to own this beyond the point that Baracky’s media can pretend otherwise. Then again, Baracky’s media seems to be getting a bit suspicious of their boyfriend.
We should await Tapper’s succinct appraisal of Obama’s answer then, since Tapper has been occasionally held up as the least of the cheerleaders. My money is on a Tapper fudge.
Chuck Todd doesn’t seem to be buying it anymore, either. Whether he’ll accurately relate that is another matter.
Pablo, I haven’t paid Chuck any mind (at all). Have you got a handy link to something issuing from him that points in a change of his stance?
either: in “the direction of” or strike “in” and substitute “at”. sorry.
It seems the President really doesn’t know what all he’s doing — and so he’s just throwing shit up against the wall to see what will stick. Either that, or he’s trying to increase unemployment while driving up debt with more spending that will not be offset by taking away more money from the private sector.
I think it’s been like that from the start.
Everything you read, from rumor mill sources, D or R, add it all up you start to get a consistent picture.
This is the kind of guy who thinks “I’ll supervise” which means, I’ll tell you all what to do and you do it. He declares what he wants and when he wants it, and then he walks out of the room and goes golfing.
If he has asked you to pull a unicorn out of your ass and you do not pull a unicorn out of your ass by the deadline, he just gets confused, angry and frustrated.
“I told you guys to come up with a plan for how to make unicorns stampede out your asses! Now I’m not playing around here. Figgure this shit out. I’ll be back Tuesday.”
He conducts meetings with foreign leaders that way, even. Tells them what he’d like to see achieved by the meeting, and then leaves the meeting and gets upset if they don’t deliver.
Missing a word, on purpose.
Government “job killing tax cuts.”
President “Make it so.”
President “So let it be written, so let it be done.”
The video version.
sdferr, I’ve not seen anything in writing, I’m just noting his incredulous questioning. Questioning, alas, is not reporting.
Sounds to me like shit just got real…
Where, up in the Whole Foods parking lot?
100% of Americans who agree with me, agree with me on this.
He claimed a clear majority of Republicans favor tax increases. And this can all be solved by getting rid of my tax breaks for corporate jets and the evil oil companies.
Cut their throat, then hand them a band-aid as long as they agree to eventually bleed to death quietly.
With the added too cute by half wording which turns reality inside out…
I meant to add that my first sentence seems to be the generalized administration policy when dealing with anyone, even supposed friends.
56.2 mpg mandate? Really?
The comments section in this editorial is interesting. The editorial itself makes interesting reading, if only to make note of where the media is going all-in on behalf of the administration.
Comment:
By way of analogy, Democrats love America very much; kind of like the abusive spouse whose status depends on how firmly his boot rests on the neck of his other half. If kicking the can down the road a piece constitutes “love” in the purported minds of people like this, fuck them (as Mike at Cold Fury used to say); fuck them right in the heart.
Vespas for everyone JD. Cars are so 20th century.
Slartibartfast – those comments are astounding. I should not be surprised, but was, nonetheless.
Geoffb – screw ’em
To love the country is to wish to be enslaved to it, at least to the extent that Andrew Stiles’s headline “Democrats Still Want to Spend More” is correct about the Democrats. We would enslave you all further, say the Democrats.
The Republicans simply take another view. “Too much is committed to be spent by Government already. We should make Government spending of the people’s taxfunds less.” We would see you be free from the enslavement of Government, say the Republicans.
Here’s how this would literally translate: “Until classical liberals/constitutional conservatives love America more than they love the classical liberalism/constitutional conservatism on which America was founded and around which its Constitution was structured, hopes for a centralized authority pretending to be a republic will always be in crisis.”
Think about that.
Not to quibble but:
Here’s how this would literally translate: “Until classical liberals/constitutional conservatives love our statist and socialist vision of America more than they love the classical liberalism/constitutional conservatism on which America was founded and around which its Constitution was structured, hopes for a centralized authority pretending to be a republic will always be in crisis.”