From Stark:
After weeks of excruciating, sometimes nauseating political maneuvering over the debt ceiling, a deal has been struck. Or has it? According to this story in the Washington Post, GOP Presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney has come out in opposition to the deal, a top Tea Party official has denounced it, and Michelle Bachman says she will vote no.
(As of 10 a.m. PDT, I see no comment yet from our own delegation, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.)
But amid all the commentary about who scored a political victory and who suffered a political defeat– written by D.C. reporters who cover national government as though it were a sporting event–it’s pretty hard to sort out how this deal will impact our economy and the people who depend on it.
Who could defend a government that depends on ever-increasing levels of debt to finance its operations? That approach, on a household level, caused the Great Recession we’re still trying to survive. It would, in the not t00 distant future, lead to a disaster in government financing as well.
But the relatively sharp cuts in government spending that are now in the works may have some awfully unpleasant side effects too. People who think this deal will help revive the economy may be in for a shock. As of this moment the Dow Jones is down another 100 points.
“The deal has moved to the right in its rhetoric,” Michael Needham, president of Heritage Foundation’s political action arm, told us, “but remains underwhelming from a policy point of view. The special commission paves the way for tax hikes. And, the last thing our country should be focused on is cutting defense when entitlement spending remains the problem. As usual, politicians are kicking the can down the road and threatening our nation’s credit rating with their irresponsibility.”
We hope that Congress and the president see this deal as just a first step in addressing the federal government’s unsustainable fiscal plan…
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/deal-310309-debt-spending.html
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“…the last thing our country should be focused on is cutting defense when entitlement spending remains the problem.”
Geeeeeeez, Joe! How can you post this crap with a straight face?
Cause I’s know how much you love it!
Hey I’m not a Maureen Dowd fan by no means, but this may cheer you up!
“As one Democratic senator complained:….“We are watching him turn into Jimmy Carter right before our eyes.”
Consider what the towel-snapping Tea Party crazies have already accomplished. They’ve changed the entire discussion. They’ve neutralized the White House. They’ve whipped their leadership into submission. They’ve taken taxes and revenues off the table. They’ve withered the stock and bond markets. They’ve made journalists speak to them as though they’re John Calhoun and Alexander Hamilton…..
What if this is all a cruel joke on us? What if the people who hate government are good at it and the people who love government are bad at it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/opinion/sunday/dowd-tempest-in-a-tea-party.html?_r=1
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
BTW who said me face is straight anyway?
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“What if this is all a cruel joke on us? What if the people who hate government are good at it and the people who love government are bad at it?”
Out of the mouths of babes. . . etc.
This deal sucks out loud. The only thing it is good for is to expose the TEA Party Patriots for what they really are… not ready to govern. This will be one of the most expensive lessons the country ever learned.
No Aman that lesson has been taking place over the last 11 & 1/2 years!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I lost my AFY to English decoder ring… anyone care to translate that last one for me? Anyone? Hello….
Well Aman, I’ll go slow, check out our debt in 2000 and check it out today.
You were speaking bout expensive lessons won’t ya?
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Where I’ll agree with those fearful of debt is spending is the problem. But it’s not spending on “entitlements” we should fear. It’s the incomprehensible spending on war and its supply that is ruining America.
It’s, of course, very popular with oil barons who need help controlling supplies, overpaid executives in the military-industrial-security industry, and of course, the lords of finance who rake it off coming and going.
This silly analogy, that the national budget is just like your personal budget, misses the key difference that most of us aren’t able to settle our debts with money we print ourselves.
But even such a system can be abused, so without taxing someone now and then the rest of the world will lose faith. It would be nice if we avoided the need to tax or print money by kicking Wall Street speculators out of the Treasury.
As long as our electeds allow the oligarchs to drain away the nation’s wealth, I have little sympathy for their overstated concerns about social spending.
IMHO both are bad (undue debt via entitlements &/or war) if they are putting us on the road to serfdom.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“D.C. reporters who cover national government as though it were a sporting event”
Well said John. I have been thinking this must be a terrible thing to watch if you area na ecconomist, but if you care about good reporting it must have not be very pleasant either.
So seniors get paid social security this time but there is a “super comittee” that will look into slashing medicare and social security. Makes sense.
LaRouche says: this bill is Obama’s Hitler Coup. Call Congress Now to Vote No on the bill and instead ram Glass-Steagall H.R. 1489 through today! The vote today is not simply determining if $1 trillion in cuts are made, but decides whether or not to establish a “Super Congress” that will decided up an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts. Those additional cuts cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress, and if voted down the “Super Congress” cuts go through anyways, automatically splitting the cuts evenly between Defense and Entitlements. The vote eliminates the Legislative branch’s power to govern the budget. The solution is to pass Glass-Steagall to bankrupt the Wall St. and London financial interests demanding these cuts. If Obama can go to war without Congress and dictate the budget without Congress, what more do you need to establish a dictatorship?
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/18956
We are turning our national policy over to a fringe cult of radical right wing extremists passing for concerned citizens who are really just the new anarchists, espousing revisionist history and nonsensical solutions while trying to toss it all up for grabs, the chips fall where they may….just because they are plentiful right now does not make them any less ignorant and dangerous..
If you call LaRouche, I’s would strongly recommend considering not giving any credit cards information out!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
…Here’s what a lot of conservatives right now might be thinking: They would be leaning right now in favor of holding their noses, even though it sort of stinks, and voting for this thing.
…they could quote Ben Franklin, from the last day of the Constitutional convention, to this effect:
“On the whole, Sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention [Congress] who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”
Then, having banked these savings, they would immediately start planning their next assaults on overbearing government, my next assault on spending….In the Madisonian system of government we have, that’s what works. That’s how it is designed to work. And it’s a profoundly conservative approach.
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/08/01/the-deal-sort-of-stinks-but-on
I really like the Headline for this link: The Deal Sort of Stinks… But Only ‘Sort of’, an editor after me own heart!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I voted for Obama and I was immediately disappointed. I have remained disappointed. In the New York Times yesterday, Paul Krugman called Obama’s deal a “surrender.” I would argue that this is not a surrender. It is common knowledge that the Obama presidency is paid for by the largest tax-dodging corporations. In my opinion the debt-ceiling crisis and everything that has not been accomplished since he took office was planned, scripted and finally staged to keep those corporations rich and to keep Americans quiet. Many Americans are aware of this. Sometimes the best laid plans of even very rich, very corrupt corporations back-fire. We will see where history takes us.
But he still gets to raise a Billion for his re-election, don’t ya know!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
A little over two years ago when the TEA Party first appeared, many of the poster’s here laughed and were absolutely certain that they would be a impotent political force at best; are you now in denial of reality?
There will be many more TEA Party folks elected in the next cycle, if the trend I see in the 1000 plus comments on news articles that I read EVERY DAY from papers around the country are any indication.
The Constitution is written in simple English, and you do not need to wear a black robe to be able to understand it. Americans are are realizing that our social contract has been broken by the folks in DC and will be sending more replacements for the imbeciles there very SOON!
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
The silent majority is waking up and they are not going to remain silent…
Paying interest on day to day items that have no potential to create PROFITS is something only fools, and folks in DC, think is rational. Debt is evil because it takes away your future choices.