Why should Democrats propose anything? Republicans control the House, and have demonstrated they will oppose anything that might reflect positively on the Democrats. Democrats might as well propose a clean debt ceiling increase, for all the good it will do.
Your objection that there’s no specific written proposal from the Dems represents a misunderstanding of how serious negotiation proceeds. “Negotiation” through the media releases, or by legislation, is political grandstanding. Actual negotiation happens behind closed doors for a reason: so both sides can negotiate in good faith without their politically difficult offers being used against them if the other side backs out.
The GOP, of course, is also not so stupid as to put forth a specific plan without prior agreement. That’s why they passed vague legislation that doesn’t actually announce the details of any politically difficult cuts. They did that to score political points, not to actually solve any problems.
What we do have is the uncontradicted representationthat both sides could agree to cut somewhere in the 1 trillion range without substantial revenue changes, but that bigger cuts in the range of 2.5 trillion would also require the GOP to give something up.
For years the popular thing was for republicans to use the “tax and spend” label fog democrats. It’s ironic that that label as a mode of action would have avoided the current crisis. The republicans since 2000 especially have been operating on the “borrow and spend” mode. At least the democrats want to pay, even if it is with their constituents money.
I don’t see any smiley-faces here, so I’ll explain the obvious.
The 49:46 ratio is taken over all Americans; the ratio is quite different if we only consider Americans who use newspapers for something other than ran-out-of-tissue bathroom emergencies.
The 49% who think U.S. bankruptcy is a good idea don’t even watch TV news (except maybe Fox); for them the idiot box is for viewing porn. If you asked them who John Boehner is, you’d just hear laughs about the name.
Not that many Americans are ignorant idiots not to mention many (if not most of them) are on the Democratic side considering that Republicans have the support of more college graduates while Democrats have more support of high-school dropouts.
I have a rainy day project for you. Look up how many on the right vs. left believe in evolution. There are ignorant people on the left, no doubt. But the ignorant people on the right are the ones setting policy.
Generally, when such extaordinory assertions are made, it is considered wise and appropriate to offer some citation. You are accordingly invited.
I know you gave the young student a homework problem, but I don’t see how this spoiler can hurt. It’s the first Google hit, which will take less time than turning his laptop upside-down to view the link.
xdsɐ˙uoıʇɔǝlǝ-lɐɹǝuǝƃ-spuǝʇxǝ-dɐƃ-uoıʇɐɔnpǝ-ɐɯɐqo/⇂8ᄐ90⇂/llod/ɯoɔ˙dnllɐƃ˙ʍʍʍ//:dʇʇɥ
Among “High School or less” voters (IIRC, this includes Curtis) voters selected McCain over Obama 46-40. The biggest variation was “Postgraduate Education”; Obama prevailed among these voters 52-42.
But does this really prove smart people tend to be Democrat? Those postgrads are the ones who brought us the Global Warming Hoax, and in today’s liberal America it’s mostly high-school dropouts who are still smart enough to know humans are unrelated to those stupid monkeys.
OK, I’ll bite. How’d you do that?
Going back four more years, Bush lost to Kerry with “no high school” types, won with “high school graduate” and “some college” and “college graduate” – and lost again with “postgrad study” types. Not sure what that means.
¡buıɥɔʇɐɔ s,ʇı 'ʇıɥs ɥo
Google’s my friend. “upside down writing” (or even just “upside” with Google’s think-ahead) took me to Upside Down Writing | Flip text generator
… and there are several similar webpages.
Your continued ability to learn absolutely nothing and be in complete contradiction of not only the facts, but what is simply logical is amazing.
Do you think creditors think less of
- People who borrow frequently and always repay their debts in a timely manner
- People who borrow money and then default on it and refuse to pay it back?
You’re saying our credit is being ruined by 1.
Which makes no sense. Our creditors love us, that’s why whenever US debt goes on the market there’s a race to snatch it up. The US has always been responsible about paying its debt, and now investing in US debt is considered to be basically the default investment - the safest investment in the world. There is absolutely no crisis in our credit rating due to the amounts we borrow. Our credit rating could not be better.
But the Republicans have decided to ruin what those centuries of good credit have bought us. We get loans extremely cheaply in terms of interest rates. Our currency is used as the world reserve currency which gives us a slew of various benefits. Much of the economic prosperity of the US is built on the trust the rest of the world has in our credit.
And you want to deliberately ruin that, just to be a petulant child.
Deciding whether or not to pay the debts that we already accrued is not the time to make some stand about government spending. We already decided to spend it. We’ve already spent it. Now the time has come to act like adults and pay what we’re obligated to pay. If you want to make a protest about future spending, it should be done at the budgeting phase (which, I remind myself, you think the current “crisis” is an issue about the budget, I realize. I’m not actually talking to you, I suppose, since you are so far gone as to be completely unresponsive to facts. I’m talking to the people who might learn from this.)
We could have perfect credit for another century running deficits, because that’s what we’ve already been doing this past century. We are nowhere near the limit to being able to pay for our debts - we could raise taxes to historical average levels and be running a surplus instantly. The only time our credit rating comes into question is if we are unable or unwilling to pay back our debt, and that isn’t even remotely an issue.
You have no idea what’s actually at stake here. We’re not talking about making gradual, crontrolled cuts to the government budget - we’re talking about suddenly being unable to pay for government services, even the necesary ones. We’re talking about not sending out SS checks so that old people can be kicked out on the street. We’d have trouble funding the day to day operations of our troops in Afghanistan. Large portions of the government would shut down - even the stuff that’s necesary to run the country on a day to day basis.
The US would still have trillions of dollars in debt, but it would no longer get the favorable interest rates that our great credit history has earned us. Instead we’d have to pay much more on the interest rates, effectively increasing our debt massively in one fell swoop, and most likely forcing us to devalue our currency in the process. You say “continue to run deficits and inevitably go into the biggest worldwide economic depression in history” but more likely defaulting on our debt has a real chance of causing that depression. You want to deliberately cause it to make a point about… not potentially causing it way down the road. Good work.
The US has carried a debt pretty much constantly for its entire existance. It has always grown its way out of it. It’s out of control now primarily because of the massive economic collapse of 2007-2008. It’s not as though we doubled or tripled government spending in those years - the deficit is huge in large part because the economy collapsed which killed revenues. Defaulting on our debt will create an even greater economic collapse which we may never be able to get ourselves out of, because our currency will completely be destroyed and the world will refuse to lend our way out of it this time around.
I stand corrected. What are these “[in]substantial revenue changes” that are part of the trillion dollar deal?
In any event, those numbers are ridiculous because we are borrowing that much over the next two years. Who has a proposal for balancing the budget in 5? 10? 25? 50? years?
Bravo, mate, bravo. Really bravo.
This is a true fiscal conservative talking there. I just wonder what the bloody hell happened over there.
True fiscal conservatives should be screaming bloody murder at this wild-eyed lunacy that is effecting the US conservative party. You are trodding the path right now to become an Argentina. I saw an OpEd, I think the Financial Times (or by a columnist that appears in FT, can’t recall if it was there) that basically accused the US of being on the way of shedding its first world status to become a banana republic.
I think it is in fact that serious. And a huge part of the interest for us outside is… if the US does this we go into Great Depression Part II, and shouldn’t think wilfully throwing the world into a crisis like this is either rational or conservative.
As I said before, discussions of the negotiations are kept deliberately vague. But from the tone of the characterization of them as different from the substantial changes needed to get the Dems to cut Social Security, etc., they appear to have been revenue increases that Boehner was initially (and apparently mistakenly) comfortable trying to sell to his caucus.
No one has a plan to balance the budget over a term that is short enough to be meaningful. Among the biggest variables in the projections is estimated growth, which we cannot meaningfully estimate over 5 years, much less 50.
What is apparently on the table is a plan to get us on much more stable footing in a politically feasible way. Even if you entirely buy the GOP rhetoric about this whole thing, they’re still both letting the perfect be the enemy of the good AND causing the US further economic harm in the process.
This year’s deficit is something like $1.4 Trillion. A $1T cut isn’t even going to get us started.
My understanding, from what I could glean (which, from objective sources, hasn’t been much) is that the Dem proposals generally have focused on cuts in the out-years, without much specificity. And given that one congress can’t constitutionally bind future ones (excepting the balanced budget amendment, from which Dems run), I don’t put much credence in those promises.
Will summed it up in Thursday’s WaPo
The conservative view of the current shenanigans can probably be summed up thusly
I won’t quote further on, you can read it yourself if you like, but suffice to say, Obama budgets have increased, not decreased, America’s debt (Obamacare hasn’t helped, to say the least). Seeing as how the Dems called all the shots since 2007-2011, it seems hard to understand how someone can blame the GOP for getting us into this mess in the first place (unless you’re a rabid partisan who feels all conservatives kill puppies, rape nuns, etc).
You’re objectively wrong. Partisanship has nothing to do with it.
Objective facts:
(1) About a quarter of the projected deficit over the next decade is because of the downturn in the economy that started in 2008.
(2) Another quarter to a third of that deficit is a consequence of the extension of the Bush tax cuts. The Dems voted to temporarily extend only about half of these cuts (because we’re in a recession), and this was blocked by the GOP. The GOP wants to make them permanent.
(3) The third major portion of the deficit is Iraq, which Bush opted not to attempt to pay for by raising revenue.
(4) Because the lion’s share of Obama’s spending was temporary (i.e., TARP, Stimulus), even a worst-case scenario projection has that spending contributing to only a small fraction of the overall debt. A best-case scenario has it actually saving the government money by avoiding financial collapse.
(5) No one knows whether Obamacare will be a net gain or loss for the federal government over the long term. What we do know is that federal medical spending before Obamacare was a huge portion of the long-term projected deficit, and serious people on both sides of the political spectrum think some of the Medicare cost containment efforts have a shot at saving us money.
(6) Our long-term fiscal future has a lot to do with how we deal with Medicare (and VA care), defense spending, and the success of our economy. It has very little to do with what we did in 2009 or 2010.
(7) Our current “crisis” is entirely of GOP creation. The Democrats want to raise the debt limit. The GOP does not.
That is how you get out of recessions. The only mistake was not spending enough, specifically on direct job creation. That is why a balanced budget amendment is insanity. Deficit spending is not always evil, and is frequently exactly what is needed deal with economic calamity.
That’s just a load of nonsense. It’s becoming very clear that the additional debt created by ‘stimulus’ spending is having a more contractionary effect on the economy than is any injection of stimulus money into the economy - especially when it’s injected so poorly and politically by a bunch of hacks in Congress.
Lost in this worry about the debt ceiling is that the threats to downgrade America’s credit rating and the obvious flight from the American dollar happened before the debt ceiling negotiations even started.
Democrats are now acting like ANY debt ceiling deal will instantly calm markets. I think it’s the opposite, and so do a lot of bond traders and businesspeople I’ve been reading. Basically, what they’re doing is sitting on the sidelines waiting to see if this deal will include any real fiscal sanity. If the government passes a debt ceiling deal that amounts to a trillion dollars in tax increases on the rich in return for a vague promise to cut some form of spending in the future, and doesn’t include some serious entitlement reform, I think there will be holy hell to pay. The attitude is that if the U.S. can’t get its fiscal act together under this kind of clearly desperate emergency situation, then all hope is lost and the U.S. is headed for default.
What no one seems to be talking about is what happens if the debt deal Obama wants is passed - all that does is kick the can down the road until 2013, after the next election. It’s a political deal, and nothing more. So in two years, this ‘crisis’ will start again, only by then taxes will be higher due to this year’s deal, and there will be 3 trillion more dollars of debt. In addition, the huge bubble of the baby boom will be two years closer to retirement, which will make Social Security and Medicare reform even harder.
Investors aren’t stupid, and two years isn’t a long timeline to them. If they see a sham deal this time that allows the government to keep growing the way it has, I think you’re going to see the economy get even worse as more and more money sits on the sidelines or moves elsewhere.