Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Tag: debt ceiling

Apparently This Debt Ceiling Thing Is Important

I’m intentionally avoiding the news – partially due to the fact that Lawrence O’Donnell looks like a melting wax statue in HD and also that it got old a long time ago.

The Guardian catches everyone up by declaring the battle between Obama and the Republicans over the national debt has reached a new level and claimed that both sides were kind of pushing each other out of the spotlight.

At least that’s how the media played it yesterday. Chris Matthews called it a “slingshot operation by Republicans” on Lawrence O’Donnell (don’t ask why I watch MSNBC), more specifically implying that it was staged by Boehner & Co. to look like a knock off of Obama’s Prime Time address. Matthews also got pissed at Obama for going on national TV to do this; as if an address to the American people had anything to do with the American people.

What I took away from Obama’s speech was that he wanted our current and future creditors to know that he would get a debt ceiling increase, just let me pretend I’m going to cut some spending so we can get more money. It had very little to do with Americans or our perception of what debt means to our day-to-day lives, except for the part where he declared we’d have higher interest rates, more trouble securing loans and huge unemployment numbers.

Obama also got really dirty and quoted Ronald Reagan.

Apparently, at the end of this America banded together and crashed a bunch of Congressional websites. Not quite sure what that was supposed to accomplish but I guess it’s cute to see us working together for a change to accomplish something.

Just what I thought I saw.

Cut, Cap and Balance Is Just More of the Same Glut, Crap and B&#$^*!

The plan approved by the House last night traded $2.4 trillion for both the Senate and House approving a balanced budget amendment, though I’m not quite sure how borrowing more money is going to help us get our financial house in order.

If I were a legislator, I’d suggest avoiding the “Let’s pay the Visa off with the Mastercard” tactic if at all possible but that’s just me.

David Brooks broke down the Republican theatrics into four categories: “Beltway Bandits,” the “Big Government Blowhards,” the “Show Horses,” and the “Permanent Campaigners.” FYI for Caleb’s knowledge, Grover Norquist was the one named as a Beltway Bandit, though in fairness to this town, anyone could be considered that.

“The Democratic offers were slippery, and President Obama didn’t put them in writing. But John Boehner, the House speaker, thought they were serious. The liberal activists thought they were alarmingly serious. I can tell you from my reporting that White House officials took them seriously,” Brooks wrote in the NYT.

“House Republicans are the only ones to put forward and pass a real plan that will create a better environment for private-sector job growth by stopping Washington from spending money it doesn’t have and preventing tax hikes on families and small businesses,” said John Boehner in a statement.

Really? So how is it that this includes an increase in the debt ceiling?

Meanwhile, this is what Ron Paul had to say in a statement:

I have never voted to raise the federal debt limit, and I have no doubt that we face financial collapse and ruin if we continue to grow our debt. We need to make major spending cuts now, in this budget, and we can no longer afford to allow more deficit spending based on promises of future cuts.

“The CCB act would add $2.4 trillion of new debt to our gargantuan $14.4 trillion debt. CCB would also only cut $111 billion from this year’s budget, allowing a deficit of nearly $1.5 trillion. This is far from the Pledge’s call for ‘substantial’ cuts. And, CCB locks us into current levels of overseas welfare, which will continue to endanger America’s security by forcing us to subsidize other wealthy nations.

See, that’s pretty much where I’m at with this. The debt trap is impossible to get out of, anyone who has gotten trapped in a pay day loan can tell you all about that.

That’s exactly where we are. That’s where we’ve been. And where we’ll continue to be unless we get the debt monkey off our back. I’m not as concerned about subsidizing China’s explosive growth as I am about compromising our national security by letting those assholes at the Fed run the show. We owe them more than we owe China.

So Norquist may be a tax troll and I’m fine with that but this Dog and Pony Debt Show has got to stop, it’s old and it’s not doing us any good.

Anyone got a better plan?

Mitch McConnell Has Given Up on President Obama

Mr. McConnell said he concluded after the latest negotiations that the administration had “expressed a fundamental unwillingness” to agree to significant spending cuts.

“But after years of discussions and months of negotiations, I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is unattainable,” Mr. McConnell said in a Senate floor speech. [WSJ]

Eric Cantor Describes Debt Ceiling Debate Using the Most Unimaginative Expression Possible

“We don’t believe that we ought to be raising taxes right now on people in this recession and in this economy, and they do,” the majority leader added.

“That is just an irreconcilable difference, and if the president wants the debt ceiling, we’re not going to go along with that if they want to raise taxes, and it just is what it is.”“That is just an irreconcilable difference, and if the president wants the debt ceiling, we’re not going to go along with that if they want to raise taxes, and it just is what it is.” [The Hill]