Let me get this straight... Events of the past week:

Republicans get their way with the debt ceiling negotiations
Immediately following this S&P downgrades the US's credit rating

You claim it's the "liberals'" fault?

Action-reaction, man. The economists at S&P see the result of the debt ceiling talks as a bad plan and thus they drop the credit rating. If the democrats' policies had been followed this wouldn't have happened.>> ^bobknight33:

They all should have listen to the Tea Party.
The Liberals and RHINOs got what they wanted now we are in a bigger mess.
You cant spend your way out of debt. Fools

>> ^quantumushroom:

Why are the socialists pretending they've "lost" because there were no tax hikes?
The "spending cuts" barely amount to a paper cut.
As Rand Paul said:
“The President called for a “balanced approach.” But the American people are calling for a balanced budget. This deal does nothing to fix the overreaches of both parties over the past few years: Obamacare, TARP, trillion-dollar wars, runaway entitlement spending. They are all cemented into place with this deal, and their legacy will be trillions of dollars in new debt."
Every time The Kenyanesque Hawaiian was declared a naked emperor and enemy of free market capitalism, the left balked. Meanwhile Jugears and Co. have been overclocking the economic engine for three years with non-stop spending. This clown never wanted jobs growth, he wanted 'brakes' on the economy and America in general, they are his idealogical enemies.
taxocrats = traitors
RINOs = traitors


It's amazing to me that you blame Obama yet have no harsh words for say Reagan or Bush. He's essentially the same as them...how the fuck is he different? You're just an idiot man...give it up!

>> ^quantumushroom:

Why are the socialists pretending they've "lost" because there were no tax hikes?
The "spending cuts" barely amount to a paper cut.
As Rand Paul said:
“The President called for a “balanced approach.” But the American people are calling for a balanced budget. This deal does nothing to fix the overreaches of both parties over the past few years: Obamacare, TARP, trillion-dollar wars, runaway entitlement spending. They are all cemented into place with this deal, and their legacy will be trillions of dollars in new debt."
Every time The Kenyanesque Hawaiian was declared a naked emperor and enemy of free market capitalism, the left balked. Meanwhile Jugears and Co. have been overclocking the economic engine for three years with non-stop spending. This clown never wanted jobs growth, he wanted 'brakes' on the economy and America in general, they are his idealogical enemies.
taxocrats = traitors
RINOs = traitors


No True Scotsman

Anyone associated with this corporate fuck government are terrorists in sheep skins.

>> ^bobknight33:

The only Terrorist in out government are the Democrats and RINOs ( Republican in name only). Not the Tea Party members.

the sad thing is, the things talked about here, are soo far over the head of ALOT of Americans

maybe not for lack of intelligence... but literally for people getting so caught up in the theatre, so caught up in Republican/Democrat bs that they fail to see what is really going on

politics for the politicians, not the people
corruption and corporate mandates

and the people eat this all up as the rich get richer, and they become serfs once again

because its all wrapped up in patriotism and religion... and any sane person leaves those at the door when it comes to politics

honestly, do Americans realize for all their "USA USA" and "WE'RE NUMBER 1" chanting, that the rest of the world sees this as the decline of an empire? (wonder how many angry Americans that will rile up)... and by this, I don't just mean the debt ceiling debate... but the apathy towards your fellow Americans when it comes to health care and other social services... let alone the other 95% of the world's population...

the saddest thing is this has all happened before, the economics even in America itself... sad not to learn from history... but then, it's usually only onlookers as opposed to the subject themselves who realize exactly whats going to happen when the subject jumps off the ledge, soo hopped up on patriotism that they think they can fly

*beg the debate about the Debt Ceiling up...

There is definitely a debt ceiling.

Where is is is up to the money lenders and such who will deem that the government has borrowed more money than it can pay back. Since we currently borrow $.43 of every dollar there not much room left to borrow.

Bernie Sanders is a joke.

Da wiki sez: Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all United States public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, several English and French banks had lent money to the South during the war.[48] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States government bond "went beyond the congressional power."[49] Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen has argued that Section 4 gives the president unilateral authority to raise or ignore the national debt ceiling, and that if challenged the Supreme Court would likely rule in favor of expanded executive power or dismiss the case altogether for lack of standing.[50] Erwin Chemerinsky, professor and dean at University of California, Irvine School of Law, has argued that not even a "dire financial emergency" could the President raise the debt ceiling as "there is no reasonable way to interpret the Constitution that [allows him to do so]". [51] The issue of the 14th Amendement and the debt ceiling has been categorized as an unsettled question in the legal community.[52]

@heropsycho, I wasn't saying the Bush Tax Cuts alone would do it, I was saying just letting existing law play out would:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/22/a-do-nothing-congress-could-solve-deficit-woes-cbo/

That includes spending cuts, and more taxes going up than just the Bush tax cuts disappearing.

None of that is pretty, but it's just one more layer of things I'm annoyed about with this whole debt ceiling hullabaloo. The budget isn't really unbalanced.

People struck "grand bargains" in the past that would raise taxes, cut spending, and balanced the budget. Why hasn't that happened? Because future Congresses kept passing laws to delay or reverse those elements of the balanced budget agreements of the past each year.

That's why I think all this BS about "shared sacrifice" is going nowhere. They didn't do entitlement cuts in the past because they're political suicide. They still are today. The reason they haven't raised taxes is because wealthy people grease an awful lot of palms in Washington, not because raising taxes on millionaires is unpopular, even amongst Republican voters. You'd have to permanently change those things for a mix of entitlement cuts and tax increases to be the way we balance the budget over the long haul.

Health care reform is the real solution, and like I mentioned before, we already did that.

In the end, I generally agree with you, but I don't think it's accurate that the debt crisis is resolved by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Tax increase would obviously help, but it won't solve it alone.

The debt crisis was born of a few factors:

-Stimulus package (temp, self-correcting since it's ending)
-Massive increase in federal spending in the 2000's bread by two wars, homeland security, senior drug benefit, medicare, medicaid
-Tax revenue declines due to Bush tax cuts
-Sudden sharp declines in income and capital gains tax revenues due to economic collapse

We can't solve the whole thing by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. In fact, I would argue the first step in resolving it is get the economy back on track to increase income tax revenues naturally as the unemployment rate would fall, and pay would increase. I would also argue that we're gonna have to massively cut defense spending at some point. This could be done many different ways, such as pulling out of Iraq and/or Afghanistan, etc. But it's gonna have to be done at some point, although it maybe difficult to do in the short run. That leaves us with what is currently being debated by Congress and the President. I'm actually pretty perplexed that they're prioritizing the debt issue without first remedying the economy. I think the debt is a very important issue, but I also don't believe it will be resolved until unemployment returns to more normal rates, unless we're refusing to acknowledge what leaders may already know - it ain't gonna get better for a long long time regardless of what the gov't does, so we might as well stop adding to the debt.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^MarineGunrock:
What we really need is a law that says no member of congress shall be allowed to receive any money from any lobbying firm, business or individual who is a high-level employee (board member type guys) of any large company worth over "x" amount of dollars. Loopholes need to be closed, but social programs also need to be cut or seriously re-vamped. What REALLY needs to happen is to close behemoth and redundant federal offices that are better left to states or that sates already have.

Well, I'd definitely love to see some sort of reform aimed at the outright bribery we see going on in government. I'm not sure how we get that to happen, though.
As far as the debt goes, my opinion is that all the Congress can do in 2011 is set the budget for 2011 and 2012. Come 2013, it'll be a new Congress, and possibly a new President. There will be another new Congress in 2015, and another in 2017, plus a definite non-Obama President in the White House.
A little mentioned fact about this debt "crisis" is that all we need to do to balance the budget is for Congress to do nothing. No more Doc fixes, no more AMT patches, no more extension of the Bush tax cuts, etc. If we just let current law play out as it was written, the budget problem will no longer be an issue.
Even if congress doesn't do that, fixing our health care system has always been the real problem with the long-term budget. If we could get our medical costs down to just the level of the second-most expensive country in the world (Germany), then we'd be seeing big budget surpluses year after year. Maybe the HCR bill passed will do that once it's all in effect (in 2017!), but it's way too early to be putting those into the budget estimates. Maybe by 2020 we'll find out that we've actually put ourselves on track to be cheaper than Germany, and our budget picture will look really awesome.
I say we just focus on getting people back to work right now, and worry about the long-term debt in the long-term, especially since it might not actually be a problem in the long-term.

Sorry, I meant the house, where all budget bills must originate. The point still stands.>> ^MarineGunrock:
Actually, the Dems control the Senate.>> ^longde:
Since the republicans control congress, it's up to them to make the hard choices next year.

Actually, the Dems control the Senate.>> ^longde:

Since the republicans control congress, it's up to them to make the hard choices next year.

I don't mean to pick on you mgr, but you don't mean that. You don't want our economy and our international prestige to take a serious unrecoverable blow. Unlike the gov't shutdown stunts, every ordinary american will suffer if they don't raise the debt ceiling.

Who needs Osama and our international rivals, when you got Boner and Can'tor ready to deliver a major self inflicted wound?>> ^MarineGunrock:
To be clear, I support raising the ceiling ONLY if there's a workable plan to reduce a LOT of spending and closing loopholes that let fatcats make millions and pay little to no taxes.

Are you kidding? The republicans should raise the debt ceiling at once, so that our country keeps it's credit rating and pays its obligations.

Unfuckingbelievable that they want to put my 401k, my bond savings, and my spending dollars at risk so they can score stupid political points. Fuck Republicans.

The right way to lower the deficit is to pass a budget that does so. Since the republicans control congress, it's up to them to make the hard choices next year. Congress, not the president, holds the purse strings, and has the responsibility to lower the debt and the deficit. For this year that means the republicans.


>> ^MarineGunrock:
Why are "handouts" like medicare called mandatory and things like national defense called discretionary?
Here's a fucking idea: stop spending more than we make. If the Dems would just agree to a balanced budget, the Republicans would raise the cieling.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

What we really need is a law that says no member of congress shall be allowed to receive any money from any lobbying firm, business or individual who is a high-level employee (board member type guys) of any large company worth over "x" amount of dollars. Loopholes need to be closed, but social programs also need to be cut or seriously re-vamped. What REALLY needs to happen is to close behemoth and redundant federal offices that are better left to states or that sates already have.


Well, I'd definitely love to see some sort of reform aimed at the outright bribery we see going on in government. I'm not sure how we get that to happen, though.

As far as the debt goes, my opinion is that all the Congress can do in 2011 is set the budget for 2011 and 2012. Come 2013, it'll be a new Congress, and possibly a new President. There will be another new Congress in 2015, and another in 2017, plus a definite non-Obama President in the White House.

A little mentioned fact about this debt "crisis" is that all we need to do to balance the budget is for Congress to do nothing. No more Doc fixes, no more AMT patches, no more extension of the Bush tax cuts, etc. If we just let current law play out as it was written, the budget problem will no longer be an issue.

Even if congress doesn't do that, fixing our health care system has always been the real problem with the long-term budget. If we could get our medical costs down to just the level of the second-most expensive country in the world (Germany), then we'd be seeing big budget surpluses year after year. Maybe the HCR bill passed will do that once it's all in effect (in 2017!), but it's way too early to be putting those into the budget estimates. Maybe by 2020 we'll find out that we've actually put ourselves on track to be cheaper than Germany, and our budget picture will look really awesome.

I say we just focus on getting people back to work right now, and worry about the long-term debt in the long-term, especially since it might not actually be a problem in the long-term.