[QUOTE=waterj2]
I think the Democrats and the Republicans should negotiate these things without using the debt limit for leverage.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I agree…yet both sides are clearly doing it and jockeying for advantage in this.
That seems to be the consensus, yes, and yet (again) neither side seems willing to budge or compromise and are seemingly further apart now than a month ago.
The ‘Tea Partiers’ seem to be wanting a $4 trillion dollar package of cuts and no new taxes raised. I don’t think they would ask for more if they got everything they wanted right there. The Dems, of course, don’t want any cuts in SS, Medicare or Medicaid, and taxes ramped up on ‘the rich’ who make more than $250k/year as well as many tax loopholes closed. I don’t think they would ask for more either if they got everything they were asking for. The trouble is, who is going to compromise and how much are they willing to bend? For me, the irony is that most of the posters in this thread, including you, don’t want the Dems to compromise at all (and thus either have the Republicans flinch or drive us off the cliff and blame them for causing the problem) while railing at the Republicans for, well, doing the same thing.
To my mind the obvious compromise is to agree to spending cuts on the part of the Dems and agree to tax increases FOR EVERYONE on the part of the Pubs…but that would require BOTH sides to compromise, when it seems to me that neither is willing to budge.
Why is only one side holding the world economy hostage? If the Dems cave in on the points the Pubs want then we’ll have an agreement, no? What you guys want is for the Pubs to cave in, and when they aren’t doing that you complain that they are holding the economy hostage, when in fact it’s both parties who are doing this. When I see one party willing to make major and meaningful concessions and the other STILL refuses to do anything THEN I’ll agree that one party is at fault here. I’m not seeing that except from the President…and he’s being flayed by his own party over trying to make this all happen. As usual.
And it’s not a flaw in our system of government…it’s both a strength and a weakness, and depends entirely on whether your gore is getting oxed at any particular time or if your ox is getting gored.
And you don’t see the irony is saying something like this while blasting the Pubs for doing exactly the same thing?? My dad completely agrees with you (as he went to great lengths to tell me this past weekend), except replace ‘Democrats’ with ‘Republicans’.
Perhaps someone should make clear that the Democrats are doing the same exact thing for pretty much the same exact reasons…i.e. political reasons that have more to do with the 2012 elections than the impending economy crisis. I thought you might enjoy this article from CNN:
The author actually agrees with you and others in this thread that the fault is with the Republicans, and claims the Dems ARE willing to make concessions. If so, I haven’t really heard of any of those concessions for massive spending cuts in SS, Medicare, Medicaid, or other spending cuts to go along with tax increases except from Obama. The point though is the part I quoted…the Dems don’t want to make major concessions because they think (probably rightly) that it will hurt their chances in 2012…which is exactly why the Pubs don’t want to make major concessions, especially on tax increases because it will hurt them with THEIR base. So…both sides are driving us towards the cliff because, well, they don’t want to hurt their re-election chances next year.
Sad, ain’t it?
I don’t know if it’s a good plan or a bad one, to be honest…I haven’t really looked at the details or seen the numbers crunched. The point though is our system is all about compromise, and it looks to me as if both sides are allowing their base to completely entrench them in their positions without any wiggle room to move in…which means we are driving right for that cliff. Obama seems the only sane one to me, and he like the guy standing in the middle of the road trying to direct traffic…liable to be hit by cars moving in both direction while they ignore him.
Actually, the Dems have already made HUGE concessions and compromises to the Republicans. It is ONLY the Republicans who will not compromise, the Republicans and ONLY the Republicans, and you should be honest and admit that.
Well, fight my ignorance then. What have these huge concessions entailed? What cuts are they willing to make in the programs listed? Massive cuts? In return for what concessions on the Republicans side? I’ve seen a lot about what the Republicans are asking for and what they aren’t willing to give up, and I’ve seen a bit on what Obama is willing to concede, but not that much on what the Dems are willing to concede…just a lot of calls for the Dems to concede nothing while blasting Republicans for doing the same thing.
When we’ve already gone pretty far down the GOP road, complaining that the Dems don’t go further is disingenuous. Taxes keep being slashed and the tax base flattened. We have a choice now. Shall pensions be cut to nothing, shall redistribution cease? Or do we reclaim the Great Society?
I hate the present generation of conservative pensioners, biting off the fingers of the young to keep the benefits of single-payer solely in their liver-spotted hands. They voted for this band of misanthropes, they can suffer the consequences. But what of the young, the working poor? I believe we should be expanding the welfare state, not killing the last vestige & calling that progress.
But yes, I will laugh like a banshee at all the stupid voters who voted GOP to “save” Medicare.
Anyway, I’ll never quite understand some people. Say what you will about Republicans, they’re at least less willing to kick the can of insolvency to future generations than are Democrats.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Last I checked, he was a … Democrat …
[/QUOTE]
Last I checked he was the PRESIDENT…which doesn’t equate to God King of the US. Seriously…wtf? Do you not understand that just because Obama proposes compromises that the Democrats still have to VOTE for it?? I haven’t seen anything indicating that Obama’s compromises are any more appealing to the Dems than the compromises proposed to the Pubs. Do you have any evidence that this isn’t the case, and the the Dems in Congress are standing shoulder to shoulder with the President and agree with his compromise terms? If not then, well, you have failed to provide the evidence I was asking for, so what was the point in saying something I had already said in a later post (i.e. that Obama is the only one who seems willing to compromise to get us through this mess)??
Democrats as a whole were wiling to vote for a clean debt limit bill … no tax increases, not cuts to entitlements, just raise the debt limit … way back when. Where were the Republicans, Xtisme?
Take it any way you like it, Xtisme. The Democrats have repeatedly offered to sign on to a debt cieling bill, the Republicans have repeatedly refused. We all know who is doing what.
Oh no, both parties stink. They do. (to quote Bayard Rustin)
But they stink in the same direction. The Dems will rob the working poor to maintain pensions while not rebuilding upper income tax brackets, & they mostly just pay lip service to conservation. The GOP will flatten the tax base, gut workers’ protections, & actively oppose conservation law, & then try to bribe pensioners just enough to stay in office.
If not for the threat of a global depression, the looming environmental crises of our era, & finally the fact that a broken USA still has the military power to subjugate nations for its wounded pride, I’d gladly watch the whole corrupt system self-destruct.
But as it is, I want the center-left to stop following the far right down the road to ruin.
No, they shouldn’t, there’s no point in doing so. You can’t successfully compromise with someone who isn’t interested in doing the same and is a dishonest negotiator. The only thing trying to compromise with the Republicans gets the Democrats is the Republicans getting what they want and the Democrats getting nothing.
No, the Republicans will just demand more. The only definition of “compromise” they understand is “you give us everything and we give you nothing”.
This is at least as ridiculous as anything that Le Jac guy ever wrote. If the police were trying to talk a bomber into disarming his device, you could just as easily claim both sides of the negotiation are equally jockeying for advantage. “Clearly.”
The Demmies would sign on with a clean bill. They’d switch off the bomb if they could. If you refuse to acknowledge that, then you have blind spots just as big as people you’ve previously castigated. We have no idea what size this explosion would be. Maybe it would be just a squib. But you can’t blame both sides, when one side has offered to switch off the bomb and negotiate about other things later, while the other side is using the possible explosion for leverage. That is simply unconscionable. The blame lies, as always, with those who use pain as a bargaining chip. End of story.
Negotiation is fine. Negotiation with a ticking countdown in the background is not fine. You don’t get to feel self-satisfied about holding some sacred middle ground here, because it does not exist on this particular issue.
[QUOTE=Hellestal]
This is at least as ridiculous as anything that Le Jac guy ever wrote. If the police were trying to talk a bomber into disarming his device, you could just as easily claim both sides of the negotiation are equally jockeying for advantage. “Clearly.”
[/QUOTE]
Well, if you say so. I’m glad to be in such august company as the horned one.
I’m sure they would, since that would be to their political advantage. That’s like saying that the Republicans would sign on to a clean bill to privatize social security, and why oh why won’t the Dems just go along with it? The Republicans see a political opportunity here. Is it slimy that they are trying to take advantage of this situation to push a political agenda? Well yeah…it IS slimy. But to sit there and say that this is something unique to the Republicans is, well, sort of ridiculous too.
Sure, if they could do it in such a way as to make things politically advantageous to them, I have no doubts they would do it. Sadly, they can’t just run roughshod this time, and the other party is setting the agenda…that’s the thing about politics, America style.
Oh, I see it alright, and whether you believe it or not I’m am VERY unhappy with the Republicans…and scared shitless, based on what some of my financial friends are telling me about some of the possible consequences if there isn’t a compromise and we are driven off the cliff. What I’m not buying in all this is the pure as driven snow, butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths Dems are blameless and the Republicans are (as usual) completely at fault for everything and are doing something that the Dems would never do (i.e. using a situation for political gain).
Of COURSE I can blame both sides, since clearly I DO blame both sides for getting us to this point, for so poisoning the well and for such a build up of rancor that essentially everything is an entrenched position that has to be fought to the death and even a situation that is fraught with real danger to the country is used for political jockeying and gain. To my mind it’s been the constant bickering and back biting from both parties who are always trying to one up the other that has gotten us here.
Yes, well, I’m sure you believe that (and probably more so after this post), but then you think I’m on par with Le Jac, so…there you go.
The blame always lies with those who are goring your ox, no doubt about it. I don’t have an ox to gore in this fight though, so I’m free to assign blame where I like…and I like to assign blame to both parties. Not equally, mind, as I DO think that this is being driven by the Republicans, mainly…but I’m not letting the Dems off the hook either, since they have contributed to the environment that exists. Also, it’s pretty rich to say that the Republicans are doing something that the Dems wouldn’t do, if it was to their political advantage to do so. I see the Republicans seeing this as a chance to even the score for what they consider to be the steamrollering they took over HCR and trying to squeeze out all the concessions they can get.
And yet, to the Republicans mind this is the perfect time to try and get real, meaningful (to them) concessions from the Dems on some of the Pubs sacred cows…stuff like cutting spending on programs they think are basically a waste.
Consider…would you have any problem with the Republicans just signing off on extending the debt? Would that give you any heartburn at all? I’ll take a wild guess and say your answer is ‘no…of course not’. And there in lies why the Republicans aren’t doing it that way…there is no advantage to them (and quite a bit of disadvantage, as they see it) in just signing off.
I don’t feel particularly self-satisfied, to be honest…more sick. It’s sort of like watching a train wreck happening in slow motion because the engine and the caboose are being run by two separate packs of unruly children, neither of who is listening to the only sane person in this whole drama, the conductor who is frantically trying to get both packs to wake up and run the train right before it plummets off the cliff.
I realize you know a hell of a lot more about economics than I do, and you probably also know a lot more about what’s going on in this situation than I do as well (to be honest, I have only been following all of this peripherally…mainly just hearing some of my friends talking about it, or listening to my dad and some of his pals rant about it from the other side of the fence). Perhaps I’m missing some of the subtleties going on here…if so, feel free to explain them. Unlike Le Jac, I WILL actually listen to what you say and won’t just dismiss you simply because you and I don’t see eye to eye. From my perspective, what I’m seeing is the Republicans using this situation to try and gain concessions from the Dems, and the Dems not wanting to make concessions, while asking for concessions from the Pubs…and Obama caught in the middle and trying to work out a compromise deal. A compromise deal that neither side seems particularly interested in taking, since it would mean pain all around.
I’m also seeing posters in this thread saying essentially the same thing my dad and his buds are saying…which is that <insert political party of choice> should make NO concessions to the other, while trying to squeeze out <insert pet sacred cow of choice that you want to squeeze out of the opponents party>.
One item about the upcoming deal (and there will be one) that I have not seen mentioned too much. How many jobs is this going to cost? We are at 9.2% officially and probably into the low teens unofficially. Who is going to hire these newly unemployed?
IMO the deal has to be made but there will be many more people hurting for years to come. These jobs lost will not be sucked back into the private sector. This deal is setting the table for a double dip recession (if not worse). It’s good for the gov’t to get its house order (which this deal will not be the total cure) but people still need to be able to afford goods & services & house payments and cars.
Lemme see if I get this straight. Debt service runs about 10% of the federal budget. the economy is in a recession and millions of Americans have been forced out of work in the private sector. Yet the public sector spending and employment continues to grow. Revenues are down because the economy is down. When you are laid off from your job do you get another credit card, or do you tighten your belt and cut out unnecessary spending? Obviously, because there’s no telling when the economy will turn around, you should cut out all unnecessary spending and not take on any more short-term debt. Same for the government. If the government ran its business like a responsible household does, we would not have this problem.
Lets start off by slashing all non-essential government services (and the associated gov’t jobs), e.g. the EPA, Dept of Energy, TSA, Dept of Education, Fannie Me, Sallie Mae…you get my drift. And let’s bring our troops home from hundreds of locations around the world. And then lets see where we are in terms of balancing the budget and servicing our debt. This liberal idea that we cannot cut gov’t spending, just as the private sector does, is moronic and gutless.
The idea that not raising the debt ceiling will push us into default is pure demagoguery.
The Demmies had control of Congress under Bush, and they raised the limit without negotiation. Was there political posturing? Absolutely. What there was not, what there had never been with the Demmies in power, was forced negotiation while the clock was ticking. You can plug your ears and go la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you, but the history doesn’t go away. Now obviously, you’re not intending to rile anyone’s emotions intentionally. But if you refuse to accept the political situation of the previous debt ceiling votes, then the blindness is absolutely just as deliberate and willful as the blindness of others you’ve complained about. But you say you’re willing to listen. Okay then. A few scattered points throughout, with the historical record at the end.
It wasn’t the thing when the Demmies were in power. They didn’t press negotiations in front of a ticking bomb.
I’ve never said the Demmies were “pure as driven snow”. I said they weren’t terrorists. My standards of evil are low here.
If you want to insult the Demmies, be my guest. Call them stupid. They are plenty stupid. Call them spineless. They are plenty spineless. Call them corrupt. They are plenty corrupt (especially in many state governments). Call them a feckless bunch of myopic shitheads who pose for pictures for political gain instead of getting down to business. All true. All very true. But they actually were standing in this very position, just a few short years ago. And they didn’t negotiate with a ticking bombing in the corner of the room. They absolutely did not do that.
Look at the history. Don’t jeer a pox on both their houses from the nosebleed seats. Look at the last fifteen years of budget negotiations. The story is plain.
The same mental process can be applied to other situations for which you would unquestionably use stronger terms of condemnation.
Or maybe not “unquestionably”. Maybe your standards of morality are just plain different. If this is true, just straight up and admit it and get on the record: You don’t mind when people openly threaten innocents for their “advantage”, to get what they want.
Admitting that would be honest. Of course, if that’s not true, then now is an excellent time to join the I’m-very-much-against-it-when-people-threaten-innocents-with-pain-for-selfish-purposes club.
Is this a serious question? Would I have a problem with people disarming a ticking bomb? (Or at minimum, hitting the snooze on that bomb?) No. No, I would not have any bloody problem that. I did not have a problem with that when the Demmies allowed it under W – even when they held Congress, and could have had “advantage” in their negotiations – and I would not have a problem with that now. Really. No shit.
For a more sensible question: Would I have a problem with the Pubbies mildly politicizing the debt limit for potential gain? Yes, it’s petty, exactly in the same sense that Obama’s actions in 2006 were petty. I’m mildly disgusted at him for having done that. Obama’s actions rated on the evil-o-meter about 0.75 nano-Hitlers. It’s not a good thing to play politics with this, but he did. If they played empty politics in a similarly petty way, I would be similarly disgusted with them.
They are not doing something similar. They are using a bomb as a bargaining chip for their negotiations. They are using a bomb as a bargaining chip for their negotiations. You say it’s in their “advantage” to do this. Again, no shit. There are plenty of people throughout history who have found advantage in threatening others. And as it turns out, doing that sort of thing is a wicked, devious, no-good thing to do. It goes off the chart. They obviously haven’t reached a level of 1.00 Hitlers (i.e. Hitler), but the evil is so concentrated I can’t even hope to find an adequate standard of comparison.
Oh, yes I can. We do have a good word for them. They’re acting like a bunch of fucking terrorists.
If they pull off a deal in the next week or so, then that will give much more credence to the “political drama” theory of these events, and I’ll be able to properly evaluate their evil again on a regular scale. Say, 2.2 nano-Hitlers. A spike worse than Obama’s, but nothing out of the ordinary for Congress. But if they press this so far that we have a genuine situation, then let’s be clear about what they are. We have very accurate descriptive words for the type of behavior they’re engaging in.
Look more closely.
Look at the budget history. It’s all about who had their hands on the detonator at any given time, and what real decisions they made.
Democratic President, Democratic Congress: Raising the debt ceiling with the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go-Act. GOP stonewalls, unanimous against. 60 vote super-majority. 0.8 nano-Hitlers. Pegs slightly higher than Obama (see below) because they filibuster, the 0.05-nanoHitlers-worse-than-Obama bastards.
Republican President, Democratic Congress: Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. They sneak in a debt-ceiling raise to this act. Heavy support by House Demmies, heavy opposition by House Pubbies, strong Senate Demmie support, mild Senate Pubbie opposition. Weird case, 'cause it’s attached to another bill.
Republican President, Democratic Congress: Raising the debt ceiling. Democrats have a majority in the Senate, but they don’t use this for a chance to blackmail W to try to turn the US in a hippie-commie state. According to your “advantage” theory, they have every opportunity, but they don’t fucking do it. Look at the vote turnout. Look at the politics. The Demmies have a majority. They could filibuster. They could even shut down the vote cold. But what happens? The vote splits equally down both parties. You often see this in an important vote that both parties know they have to pass, but might not make for good headlines. The strongest candidates take the political hit, while the other half stands on false principle. The political negotiation is right there in the numbers. Both sides know it has to pass, so they pass it. And look at the margin compared to the previous Obama example: 53 votes. No filibuster. There are plenty of nay-voters for the final vote, but those nay-voters allowed the vote of cloture no problem. The empty politics is all over this one. 0.93 nano-Hitlers.
Republican President, Republican Congress. Debt Limit Increase Resolution. You can see here that this is a reverse of the 2010 vote. It plays almost, but not quite, exactly in the reverse of the 2010 vote. Vast majority of Pubbies vote for, all Demmies but one vote against, resolution passes. Interesting twist: The Demmies don’t filibuster. Are you noticing the pattern? Yes, all the Demmies vote against, but they don’t make an issue of it. They get their happy headines, then they go home to ignore their wives and fuck their mistresses. 0.75 nano-Hitlers. This is Obama’s famous vote.
2002, 2003, 2004. Republican President, Republican Congress. Similar votes. You have many of the Demmies playing games, making headline opposition, but nothing to stop the bill, not any filibustering at all. And you have Speaker Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, and Kyl voting “yes” on every single one of these votes: 02, 03, 03, 06, 07 (every one under a Republican President), with one exception of Kyl voting no in 02.
In order to get to the last time that there was a game of negotiating about the debt ceiling? Take a guess. Shouldn’t be hard. Should be plain as day by this point.
…did you guess… Clinton? Secretary Rubin was the first one who had to play with funding at Treasury to make sure money was flowing, even given the tightness of the negotiations. We’re back to a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. We’re back to the Republicans, and only the Republicans, threatening a technical debt default in order to get what they want. Sure, this is “advantage”. And my point is simply: This is wrong. This is a wrong thing to do. This is a wrong thing for the Republicans to do which stands out in magnificent horror from the many other wrong things that all of them do. There is no equivalence here. They backed down at the time, and the whole world assumed that they were educated on what might actually happen, so that they wouldn’t do anything so dick-headed again in the future.
Whoops.
The Demmies being posturing idiots doesn’t make what the Congressional GOP is doing now, again, any less horrible and wrong. You can’t blame atmosphere. This is real behavior I’m pointing out, atmosphere be damned. It is a genuinely terrible thing they’re doing, and the very fact that they’re doing it for their own “advantage”, at the possible expense of so many others, is what makes it so god damn evil and unique. This is an amazing transgression. The only analogy to use here is terrorism, a hostage negotiation. And no matter what crimes you can list against the Demmies – and there are many crimes – all of them pale as mere peccadilloes compared to what appears to be happening now.
If it’s drama, then it’s drama. I can deal, if it turns out a safe resolution has always been planned from the beginning. The GOP is the party of actor Ronald Reagan. They like big flashy SFX in their negotiations. That’s more evil than I’d like, but it’s still not the end of the world. I can deal with that.
But we’ve seen economic crap lately, and it ain’t pretty. What if the money markets seize again? What if there’s another run on repo? What about the foreign exchange markets? What if a US debt downgrade fucks shit the hell up? Nobody god damn knows. If they push this “negotiation” to the limit, to the panic point, then they are genuinely no better than terrorists.
I see that.
I don’t care about that.
When voting time comes, the Pubbie supporters will vote Pubbie, the Demmie supporters will vote Demmie, the moderates will split in a strange way, and life will go on. People are full of idle chat and gossip on economics/politics/celebrities/that hot chick at the laundry (u know? the 1 w/ teh big jugs? i heer she likes it nasty LOL) all the time. I don’t care about political gossip. I don’t care about uninformed opinions. I care about real behavior. I care about the real behavior that the Pubbies are (apparently) engaged in at this time. I care about the real behavior that they are using the potential pain of innocents for their own sick advantage, in a very specific horrible way that the Demmies have never, ever done.
Now maybe this is only clear to me because I watch the budget a little more closely than the average person (for what are probably obvious reasons). And I’m telling you, in a lifetime of being disgusted by politics, this is the most disgusted I’ve ever been. Given the various wars that have come and gone, that is perhaps not a rational reaction. It might come from the over-narrow focus of my life. But they have their hands on the detonator for this go-round, and they are playing around with shit that no-one fully understands. That they are doing it for their own advantage does not make the situation better. It makes it so, so much worse.
There’s a big election coming up. They can make an honest case for their policies. They can negotiate in Congress, without a ticking clock, making their case. And given what a fucking idiot Obama has been about economic policy (see the latest depressing job numbers), the Pubbies have a legitimate shot at winning. They can play the game, without damaging people’s lives any more than the regular damage caused by [insert typical policy I disagree with]. That normal game is what they should do. Taking advantage from misery is beyond appalling.
The EPA is non-essential? Enjoy your nice glass of TCE, friend.
And not raising the debt ceiling will lower our bond rating & cost us more money for new bonds. We won’t default, but it will cost us totally, for reals, non-essential money.
My dad completely agrees with you (as he went to great lengths to tell me this past weekend), except replace ‘Democrats’ with ‘Republicans’.