Are you or are you not still receiving disability checks from the government?
You do realize there is a possibility such checks will NOT be issued as usual in August, yes? If not, consider yourself informed. Of course, you should be overjoyed yet another person is off the government teat, but somehow I don’t think you’ll be happy about it when it affects you.
I wonder about how this would work politically. Bachmann says that of course we can continue to cut social security and military checks. But her plan laughably leaves nothing for even the court system. Back in 1995, Rubin told Congress that he would stop cutting social security checks and Gingrich buckled. How powerful is today’s reality denial system? If Congress fails to raise the debt limit, workers are furloughed and disability checks suspended, will the nutjobs just blame Obama for following the laws of arithmetic?
If US borrowing costs go up by billions for years, will that give Republicans pause? That really isn’t taxpayer-friendly.
OK, I’ll be nice and point out once again where you have no clue.
You first asked me about my “favorite entitlement/benefit/government money” - I have no such thing, at least not the way you state it (see #5 below).
Also, in that first post, you say “Or do you think that if they cut social security and/or disability for all the riff-raff you complain about…”. I do not complain about people on social security or disability.
Next, you tell me to “Enjoy your upcoming poverty”. Only an idiot would think that missing one payment would put me into poverty.
You keep referring to checks - the government does not send me checks.
I am not and have never been “on the government teat”. It is a fact of life that no matter how much you want it to be, repeating a falsehood over and over will not suddenly make it truth.
There’s probably other things but that’s all the time I’m going to spend on this. You keep popping up and saying inane, untrue things about me when it has been explained to you over and over what the reality is. But, apparently, since it doesn’t fit with whatever picture you have decided to paint, you just ignore it and continue to prove yourself a complete idiot.
Have a nice night.
That makes nine posts to this thread by you, curlcoat, not a single one of which was on topic. Could you please for the love of God shut the fuck up already, you tedious fucking windbag?
Well excuse me all to hell for responding to posts. Do you need me to show you how to use your scroller? Since your two posts here seem to be just opportunities to pretend that only one political party is at fault for the nation’s problems, I’m not sure you have much ground to stand on regarding staying on topic.
I’m sorry my politics don’t lockstep with yours, but anyone that thinks only the Republicans (or only the Democrats) are responsible for any crisis shouldn’t be voting, much less commenting in public.
Absolutely agreed. Since the legislature is completely incapable of legislating, all matters of import are handled through the initiative process, so we wind up with fiascos like Three Strikes – which has led to massive expansion of prisons, prisoners, and prison guards; completely unforeseen in the tax cutting frenzy of Prop 13.
False equivalences are part of the problem. The Republicans and Democrats had parity in inanity during the 1970s: the Dems may have even had an edge. But here’s a newsflash: if you really care about budget deficits then you will be willing to give up some things that you like. Otherwise you are bullshitting. And one party does this far more than the other.
I was stunned to read in the Economist the following
So I don’t blame the politicians. I blame the initiative system which made California ungovernable.
I’m not trying to show equivalences. Giraffe was trying to make out that everything is the fault of one party and I merely gave an example of what happened when the other party had control of one of our biggest states for a few decades. Then I responded to some other posts and he flipped out. Shrug. As for giving up some things that I like, Christ I’ve been doing that all my life and I have quite a bit of trouble believing that anyone short of a millionaire doesn’t do the same.
None of our current problems, be they state or federal, are the doing of any one party, or anyone currently in office. I personally don’t think they are solvable by any one person, or that they will be solved in my lifetime. Particularly if people just keep pointing fingers and believing (or are they just pretending) that if someone holds X view, they must hold all the views of a particular political party.
I was referring to the House Republicans, who have refused a deal with 85% spending cuts and 15% tax increases though they were advocating precisely such a deal 3 months ago. Those tax increases were wholly a matter of closing loopholes and special concessions, such as the rule where hedge fund managers pay 15% tax on their income. Jeez if you can’t accept a deal like that, you really don’t care about the deficit.
You have not substantiated this claim. You have not dug deep enough. (That’s ok actually: most of us are not political junkees). We had budget surpluses under Clinton which were turned into deficits by unaffordable tax cuts and a pointless war in Iraq. Again, we used to have fiscal solvency and could achieve it again by winding down the war and letting the Bush tax cuts expire. I know this is counterintuitive, but actually the blame really does lie disproportionately with one political party. It’s not the supreme coincidence of 50-50 blame that the media likes to pretend to, always, regardless of the policy in question.
More charts: Spending has trended downwards since the 1981 recession – but so have taxes. Chart of the Day: We Have a Taxing Problem, Not a Spending Problem – Mother Jones. Any party that denies the formula deficit=revenue-spending and says that “We don’t have a taxing problem, we have a spending problem”, is in denial. Any party that risks or foments a financial crisis by repealing the Gephart rule deserves nobody’s support. I for one hope that the Wall St banksters figure this out: it might be worth a couple of percentage points change in taxes to be governed by the sane.
Since I don’t follow these things, I can’t comment on them other than there must be more to the story - why would they do a 180 in just three months time?
I don’t tend to think in terms of the last few years or even the last ten years. What I see are the repeating cycles of boom and bust, which cannot be laid at the feet of the Democrats or Republicans or Whigs or whatever. No one political party has all the answers nor carries all the blame. Particularly these days when there is so much blurring - Gov Arnie was registered as a Republican but sure didn’t act like one in most cases.
Now, I am sure there are ways we could move towards making our current situation better (and ending that war sounds like a grand idea to me), but to lay all blame at the feet of one party? Do you really believe that the House Republicans don’t care about the deficit? Or that they are just all blithering idiots?
GAH pop-ups! Oh sorry…
Who has been getting those tax cuts? Also, could we not also have a spending problem, such as the giant waste of taxes that is the war?
Huh. That second one seems to say that we not only need to cut some spending, it specifies the same ones that I’ve been on about on this board for at least a year. Guess I’m a genius! 
They don’t negotiate in good faith.
Bipartisanship helps the President. The Republicans have nothing to gain from helping Obama cut a grand deal. This is the explicit political analysis of Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. They don’t particularly want a deal.
Worst case scenario, the economy tanks in 2012. Then… the Republicans take the White House. Economic sabotage is a viable Republican strategy.
The only complication is that Wall St. donors might get pissed if the Republicans truly demo the economy. So there’s a shot at a last minute deal and another shot at a deal in August. I don’t see much chance of responsible policy though.
Business cycles are something the federal government can fight, but not conquer. That’s another thread.
My blanket statements about Republicans apply only to Washington Republicans. State and local should be evaluated on a case by case basis. As for Arnie, he could never win a Republican primary: he only got into Sacramento because of the recall of Grey Davis.
I concede it’s counterintuitive. I add that there were adults in the Republican party during the 1980s and earlier. But check it out: Reagan raised taxes multiple times. You can’t be serious about the budget deficit while ruling out any sort of tax increases. And you can’t be serious about the budget deficit while expanding entitlements without paying for them – as the Republicans did under G Bush with Medicare Part D.
The Affordable Care Act (2010), OTOH, was fully paid for. That’s what responsible governing is about.
If the Republicans cared about the deficit, they wouldn’t have passed additional tax cuts during the height of the Iraq war. Hell, they would have raised taxes.
Bush cut taxes on everyone, but the lion’s share of the benefits go to those who used to pay 39% and now pay 36%. Yeah, all the Straum and Drang is about 3 percentage points.
Were you surprised that the Bush tax cuts were way larger than the Afghan and Iraq wars? I was. Another big chunk was simply tied to the current Lesser Depression: tax receipts collapse and food stamp expenditures et al increase during economic downturn.
Alright, your direct deposit, then.
It’s money that comes from the government to you. Therefore, it’s government money.
ETA: It’s also been stated a number of times that such checks failing to go out is a possible consequence if this mess isn’t straightened out.
If we had thought a shadowy cabal of oligarchs had full control over the Republican Party, I’d say their failure to rein in Eric Cantor after he pretty much told them to eat his shorts is proof that this is not the case.
Well, now, there’s some good news.
Not sure, but I think I’d rather have shadowy oligarchs running the country than petulant kindergarteners.
President Obama should just order Treasury Secretary Geitner to pay the debts. Amendment 14, Section 4:
So, who do you think would be the very first Congressgit to file impeachment papers? Louie Goober of Texas? Alan West of Florida? Would be quite a race, see who gets there first.
That “authorized by law” clause might be a sticking point. But apparently a few legal scholars have suggested that Obama just suspend the law, in the way that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. I like that idea.
Yeah, I still think he should tell them to pound sand and do it anyway.
Hey, don’t let the fact that you don’t actually know anything about a topic stop you from dropping into a thread and peppering it with platitudes and irrelevant tangets!
The current debt ceiling crisis is 100.0000% the fault of exactly one party. That would be the party that stated they would refuse to raise the debt ceiling (and thus risk a U.S. default on debt obligations) unless certain vague demands were met. Until now, the debt ceiling was raised routinely as needed to accomodate the spending that Congress had budgeted.
But, please, don’t let the fact that you know fuck all stop you from chiming in with such helpful contributions as “that doesn’t sound right to me” and “there are two sides to every story, you know!”