Remember this, from back in mid-November?
A co-chairman of President Obama’s debt commission said Friday that a fast-approaching congressional vote on whether to raise the government’s debt limit will cause a political “bloodbath” that will force lawmakers to take their recommendations seriously, regardless of whether their panel produces a consensus product.
“It won’t matter whether two of us have signed this or 14 or 18. When debt limit time comes they are going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now?” said Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming.
“We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give them a piece of meat, real meat, off this package. And boy, the bloodbath will be extraordinary. They’ll say, ‘Well how the hell do you get meat off this package?’ And they’ll say, ‘A couple of jerks did something for eight months and it’s laying out there. Go look at it. It’s written in English. No wizardry in it,” Simpson said, speaking with reporters at a breakfast in Washington sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
Alan Simpson is what passes for a moderate in the Republican Party, and he told us that these Tea Party maniacs were not going to give a shit about destroying the credit-rating of the United States of America. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Tea Partiers are utterly indifferent to the potential consequences of giving people the impression that we’re not a reliable place to invest.
Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips is sounding the “drumbeat” when it comes to the debate over raising the debt ceiling. He wrote on his blog Sunday: “We need our Senators and Congressmen to hold firm on this one. The left will tell us it is the end of the world if the debt ceiling is not raised. There is something worse than defaulting on our debt. That is continued, uncontrolled spending and borrowing.”
Never mind that this dude didn’t give a crap about the deficit while George W. Bush was creating it. He is echoing the new talking point: whatever the consequences of destroying our creditworthiness, they won’t be as catastrophic as what will happen if we keep accruing more debt. So, obviously we should destroy our creditworthiness in a vain attempt to slash spending by absurd levels overnight and without hearings or foresight.
I think the best way to deal with this is for the president to talk directly to the large international investors who finance this country and tell them not to worry, that the Republicans are acting like children but they have no real power, and that the heat-fever racing through their brains will subside once they get a few gulps of Potomac-water. Just call them petulant jackasses who lack all seriousness and should be treated accordingly. This has the added advantage of setting the basis for Obama’s reelection campaign which is pretty much, “What? R U Kidding? These m’fuckers are craaaazee.”
You state that the Obama re-election approach will be to blame the Repukeliscum. So far, he is still running the bipartisanshit stuff as far as I can tell. Why do you think that he will begin to put the blame where it belongs?
You keep repeating all this bipartisan stuff as if you can’t see what he is actually doing, which is pretty evident as far as I am concerned. It’s what he has been trying to do for 2 years; to shame republicans into working with him; to tell the media and the US public that there is more to governing than just sitting on the sidelines criticising; to emphasise that he is the only person acting like a grown up and daring the republicans to follow his example. He isn’t loving bipartisanship for the sake of it, he’s trying to get things done.
As for blame I know you didn’t miss the many many months he railed against the republicans taking middle class tax cuts hostage, or railed against them standing there while he was trying to get the car out of the ditch; or not picking up a mop; or calling them the party of no; or smacking them down in their retreat; or the fact that he refused to meet McConnell as he thought it was a waste of time; or countless other examples.
You are either a troll or an idiot. The biparisonSHIT thing DOES NOT WORK. It is an admission of weakness. It demonstrates, over and over, that it is a wretchedly poor negotiating position.
There is a huge difference between a bipartisan process and a bipartisan result. A bipartisan process is stupidity exemplified. In this approach, you start by conceding negotiation room to the Repukeliscum, and end up losing in the process. By starting where you want to end up, you lose.
In a bipartisan result, you start in a position of strength, and force the other side to concede, as you conceded. The bipartisan result is an outcome from a partisan process.
If you don’t know this, you are obviously no student of politics. Or as I said, you’re a troll, which I suspect anyway.
Your Projection Fu is weak. Next time, accuse homeruk of being a repetitious, single-issue poster.
They just added $800+ billion to the debt. The only solution seems to be to cut spending, cut entitlements. Never a moment’s thought to raising revenue. Can’t do that in a recession. No way! The entire position is without logic or any sophistication.
This is all “bargaining” and also intended to rile up folks who don’t understand it all. Ask anyone on the street what the debt ceiling is. Ask them how “exceptional” the US would be if our currency weren’t the basis for everything that goes on in the world. About as “exception” as Greece or Ireland.
The Dems need some good plain-spoken talkers out there who can fight this silly meme. But I’m afraid that the teevee has already planned out this “grand bargain”: What are you going to give us for our vote to raise the debt limit? There shouldn’t even be a tit-for-tat, but that’s the way it’s already being played. So sad.
treat them like the crazy mofos that they are.
Republicans are playing chicken with the debt ceiling to see if they can make Obama blink. He will probably talk to the Republicans in private. To escoriate them in public would make it all the more difficult to get anything done. Foreign leaders and investors know what is going on.
The repubs can’t come up with any new ideas so they recycle the junk they did during the Clinton years. One thing they don’t seem to understand is Obama isn’t Clinton.
If they don’t raise the debt ceiling, well, they would be responsible for the economic problems that would hit the country. How many would suffer should be, ha, ha, told to the country by the media.
Just to inject a little reality into this, here is the November 2010 (FY2011) Debt Position and Activity Report from the Bureau of Public Debt.
Here are some things to notice. The current debt public debt is $13,860,774,000,000. Left available borrowing as of November 30 was $484,879,000,000.
The intra-governmental transfers (mostly from Social Security) amount to $4,585,749,000,000.
From the calculation to the penny on 12/31/2010, the current debt was $14,025,215,218,708.52 and the intra-govermental holdings were $4,634,739,130,665.17.
And the current interest on the national debt amounts to $280 billion for the last fiscal year (FY 2010). Pretty close to the largest transfer of wealth from the ordinary taxpayer to the rich in the budget.
From the IRS stats, in FY 2009 (the worst of the recession), the receipts were $1.175 trillion from individual income tax, $225.8 billion from corporate income tax, $858 billion from employment taxes (including FICA), $46 billion from excise taxes (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco, and so on), $3 billion from the gift tax (exclusively paid by the wealthy), and $21 billion from the estate tax (estates over $3 million). And BTW, the median adjusted gross income on individual returns was $33,048.
There are a number of things going on here. Spooking the markets with fears of default gooses the interest rate (and lowers the yield); it makes stocks look more attractive. Wall Street also has its eye on the trillions of dollars in Social Security investment that could be “put to better use” for hefty management fees. And investors want the order of payout in a government default to be (1) commercial investors, (2) foreign governments, (3) Social Security recipients. Fear of default because of the inflexibility over the debt limit could stampede Congress to default on the $4 trillion of intra-governmental payments, immediately reducing the debt by $4 trillion, never mind the effect on Social Security recipients in the future. Along with the cut in payroll taxes, that would put Social Security $6 trillion poorer this year than last and at last provide objective evidence that the Social Security Trust Fund is in trouble. It would also be theft, pure and simple.
The Republicans are not acting like children; they are systematically setting out to destroy the last remnants of the hated “socialistic” New Deal and Great Society.
It’s Democrats in Congress who are crazy for not seeing what the Republicans are doing and not strategizing to get the Republicans begging for spending and tax increases.
It’s very easy to get diverted by the shiny objects of absolute stupidity; it was part of what did Al Gore in during the 2000 debates.
The movement conservatives of the Republican Party have not been shy about their goals.
What’s the strategy to get Republicans begging for spending and tax increases?
Put forth a budget that has draconian cuts to areas of the budget that affect their districts. And holding certain things harmless, like Medicare, that they will not touch unless they get bipartisan cover. Plus put some military contracts that are unneeded and wasteful, but mostly affect Republican districts on the block. Start exposing the extent to which the military budget is driven by Congress not the considered advice of the Joint Chiefs.
There are any number of inventive ways to play it if the Democrats, now in the minority in the House, and the President can work together for once.
and yet nothing in your whole post about how it was Obama that put Mr. Simpson on the his hand-picked commission.
How are you brendan?
Happy New Year and I hope it’s a good one.
I don’t think Obama has figured out that the massive debt piled up by Reagan and Bush was no accident– it was a designed strategy intended to bury the nation under a mountain of debt that would be used as the pretext for cutting back social programs and government in general. What has happened in California is a smaller version of the same strategy, and it was intentional. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.