Or is the GOP’s polling showing that Americans are solidly behind fiscal restraint and real reforms?
U.S. House Republicans plan a vote next week on a measure to cut spending, cap expenditures and condition a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling on passage of a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.
While the plan may win acceptance by the Republican-led House, it can’t pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, according to Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House’s No. 2 Democrat. It will enable Republicans to put their stance on the record while offering no immediate resolution to talks in Washington aimed at reaching a deficit-cutting deal by an Aug. 2 deadline for raising the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt ceiling.
“You’ll probably see the House vote on a couple of things just to make political statements,” President Barack Obama said at a news conference at the White House after the Republicans announced their plan.
A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote of both House and Senate, and then ratification by states. “We don’t need a constitutional amendment to do that,” Obama said. “What we need to do is do our jobs.”
Well, in his bumbling, pseudo-intellectual way, Obama makes the exact same point he probably believes he’s refuting — namely, that if they could do their jobs, they wouldn’t have needed a constitutional amendment.
Or, to put it in terms a faculty lounge president might understand, his statement, deconstructed, secures and own its inverse.
Boing!
A balanced budget amendment has come within a vote or so of passing on a couple of occasions over the past several decades, and the public tends to support an amendment at 65-70%. But not everyone would be happy about the immediate pain such an amendment would cause.
Which is too bad. The structural edifice has rotted. And it’s time to do the hard work of rebuilding. And if that means jobs are temporarily lost in the public sector, well, that’s better than watching the private sector atrophy — and will in fact probably lead to the kind of private sector resurgence that can create jobs without tethering them to unsustainable benefits produced with Ponzi dust and promises.
Programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Unemployment Insurance are designed to support families during times of need, stabilizing or offsetting their economic instability.
I don’t see anything on that list that can’t be done at the state level. In fact, I don’t see anything on that list that corresponds to an enumerated power of the federal government, meaning that those are all programs that should be taken care of at the state and local level, and even that assumes that they’re not programs that couldn’t be better accomplished by private charity.
“A Balanced Budget Amendment is bad, because it might keep us from continuing all these extra-Constitutional programs!” Yeah, that’s a real drawback, isn’t it?
“Hmmm… Bad wood.”
“What do we do?”
“Take out bad wood, put in good wood.”
— Arachnophobia
Job killing tax cuts… I just have to get that in again. For the effect.
He actually said that.
Me, I plan on going shopping today for a few items I’ve been putting off waiting for the right opportunity and low and behold there be clearance sales! But then I’m an evil conservative what might actually buy a few more items with the money saved from clearance sales. I might ask the clerk at the cash register what she thinks about her employer’s job killing clearance prices, though. I’m funny that way.
As I stated on another thread: The concentration on the word “jobs” is accepting a bad premise. Not all “jobs” are of equal worth or even of any worth.
The question should be jobs doing what? Jobs accomplishing what? There are jobs which build the economy, increase the wealth of the country, the world. There are jobs which build nothing, increase no wealth. Then there are the jobs which destroy wealth, ruin that which has been already built.
What does Obama see as his job? Going Cloward-Piven on the entire national economy? That’s what his actions say. That’s what his Party’s actions have said. His “we” would be prevented from doing what they apparently see as their “jobs” by either a balanced budget amendment or a failure to raise the debt ceiling, though they will attempt to continue the destruction no matter what is obstructing that “job.”
According to his own metric, Barcky has not yet done his job. He has not been fiscally responsible, nor lived within his means.
So by “do our jobs,” is Obama telling Reid that he needs to pass a budget for FY2009, FY2010, and FY2011?
Job killing tax cuts
One of those principled libertarians giving us a lecture on surrender…
Maybe she ran into Frum or Brookie at some Hamptons party last week.
The view from Paul Ryan’s house.
http://tinyurl.com/65ltlg7
I wonder if he has cucumbers
this was sort of like the “surge” in the war on jobs
#3
Boggles the mind, don’t it,Steph.
I’m going to annoy some trout next week an I must go and buy a bandana to keep my white racist neck from getting red.
The bonus part is that I’m going to be helping the economy of SW Wisconsin.
Invisible hand and all that.
“Invisible Hand”
Would be a good name for a rock group.
Well, we’re back from shopping. Us, with the shopping gene hardwired into the DNA, already done. Kohl’s must be filling their purchasing department with layoffs from the govt as they had ample supplies of shit no one likes (or wants at any price). Gah! When you take an 18 yo to a mall and they come back empty handed you know there’s a disconnect. Much like the government.