Originally Posted By gadzuux I've been watching the developments in the debt ceiling negotiations closely over the past few months, and I cannot understand what the republicans are even thinking (so what else is new?). The way I see it, the GOP doesn't hold a single card here. First, they're owned lock stock and barrel by Wall Street, and they WILL dance backwards to their master's tune, and anyone with a sense of reality knows it. Yet they have the effrontery to stand there and try and say that they'll only sign off on an increase if this that and the other conditions are met. The truth is they WILL increase the debt ceiling, whether or not their petulant demands are met. This is a corner they've painted themselves into. They must raise the debt limit, and everybody knows it, yet they've entrenched themselves into an untenable position of insisting on no revenue increases - any - ever. This alone is an absurd position to have taken, and they're now trapped by their own ridiculous rhetoric, and have allowed themselves to be portrayed as the lackeys of corporate and wall street interests. Fortunately the GOP base has never seemed to care about this - they continue to proudly vote against their own best interests - 'we don't need no stinkin' health care, or social security, or medicare, or jobs, or teachers, firefighters, cops, courts, nurses, roads, bridges, etc - it's the PRINCIPLE of the thing!' Such hopelessly foolish people, and so many of them. There's essentially two different republican parties - the 'old guard' who represent the elite and wealthy - the "Rockefeller" wing of the party. Then there's the teabaggers, who don't have a clue as to what governance is about and how it works, only that they rode into town a few months ago with fervor and zeal about one thing and one thing only - taxes. They're not going to vote for any revenue increases because it's their only issue - take that away and they're exposed for the clowns they actually are. So caught between a rock and a hard place, McConnell floats the ludicrous suggestion that congress cede their constitutionally derived power over all budgetary matters unto the president, but only until 2013, when they hope he'll be gone. This was a craven political move, designed to absolve themselves from any responsibility - for strictly political reasons. But in the meantime, not only are they surrendering power to the president, they're also clearly demonstrating that they are incapable of actually governing, which requires passing legislation, which they cannot seem to do. This had the dual effect of enraging the fringe right (which is all that's left of the right) and making themselves look foolish and incompetent to everyone else. Not surprisingly, the president is having none of it. Today he dressed down Eric Cantor, warning him not to test the president's will, and not to provide any ultimatums. In the background, we have "front-runner" GOP presidential candidate Bachmann telling anyone who will listen that she opposes raising the debt limit. For added measure, we've got 'also-ran' candidate Pawlenty saying "me too!" when it comes to defaulting on our debt. And Trump threatening to get back in the race. Can these people get any crazier?
Originally Posted By andyll << Can these people get any crazier? >> No What's frightening is that in my company full of finacial people... none of them have a clue of what to expect if the ceiling is not raised. Fed payroll's would end putting millions effectively out of work. Possibly millions of people would not receive their social security check. Millions of people would lose their health care. Billions of dollars of government contracts would not be paid out which could put millions temporary out of work. All those people not receiving paychecks means much less tax revenue in september. september is a quarter end meaning over 100 billion in interest will be owed. Our credit rating will decrease meaning treasuries cannot be used for bank/insurance reserves. That could lead to margin calls and 1000s of banks could start failing again and a credit freeze again. The lower credit rating will cost us trillions in future interest. The dollar will drop like a rock and likely lead to hyper inflation. The bond market could collapse. The direvitive market will likey collapse. There is no safe place to put your money... cash instruments will note be safe. I still trying to decide where to park my 401k money. I can't find a place. Scary stuff.
Originally Posted By andyll I forgot to mention we have troops on the ground. If this continues for more then a month they might not have money for combat operations.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 There is a 3rd part of the GOP ( yes it is that fractured)- and it resides mainly in the Midwest and is focused on actual spending cuts and fiscal conservatism..and is a fairly moderate bunch on everything else. The issue is the press chooses to cover the nut jobs- whichever party they belong to. The GOP understands damn well what can happen with regards to the entire list- as does the ruling party. Just like here in Illinois the first cuts that can be made do NOT have to be the dramatic ones for old people / mentally ill / military etc when bills cannot be met- but those are the ones that hyperbolically'sell' their side. It's all a posturing game- with our money and our future and neither side is innocent in this crap. I am sick of both of them and their nonsense. We NEED to cut spending but instead of doing so we try and get everyone riled up that we can't cut 'key' services' Well Doh ! But there is so much damn waste and corruption many cuts would be easy-- but it's easier to cry foul than do that. Oh- and those cuts can be made by both sides, not just the Dem's-- the GOP pisses away plenty of money also..and sadly do a horrific job of over spending last administration. Also any GOP candiodate who wants to cut medicare and social security without having taken care of any waste previosuly gets no vote in my book- and shouldn't from anyone. This is why I have gone from a moderate GOP supporter to an Independent. Show me you have a plan, and a clue, and some human compassion to go along with fiscal responsibility and you get my vote- regardless of party. Oh how badly we need a real 3rd party in this country - and not the tea party
Originally Posted By ecdc It's just insane. I mean In. Sane. Any tax increase will not pass the House. Taxes are at their lowest since the Fifties. You and I pay more taxes than scores of corporations. And yet...still they kick and scream. They want deficit reduction on the backs of the poor and the elderly. That would be bad enough...but these are the same clowns that put two wars on a credit card. Michelle Bachmann loves to crow that Obama raised the deficit by more than the other Presidents combined, but fails to mention that's because Bush kept the wars off the books. Obama insisted they be counted. There's always been silliness and eye-rolling at politicians. But these guys have become a parody of a satire of a spoof of an SNL sketch.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 there used to be somewhat easily defined good guys and bad gusy-- now all there is is a bunch of either arrogant / or just dumb idiots out for themselves and their special interests. I am seriously concerned that we will not come out of this recession anytime soon and when we do we will be in worse shape than when we were in it. The world is passing us by educationally and in the past week Illinois decided that they will no longer test for writing skills in high school in order to de emphasize it because they do poorly - Indiana decides to no longer teach cursive writing - and the top goof Arne Duncan ( another political hack from Illinois- just look at how wonderful he left the Chicago Public Schools)- decides he will just override anything and eveything he wants on no child left behind because 82% of the schools would be failing it. Instead of worrying why 82% are failing ( and some are really technicalities) - we'll just blow it off... the future we are leaving our children is a grim one indeed
Originally Posted By vbdad55 I work with a school board and understand NCLB very well-- a lot of the 'failures' are metrics issues based on small sample size -- fix the metrics and you fix a lot of the issues. However the program also does highlight schools with issues - to ignore those signs will produce yet another workforce that can't do anything except for the top x %
Originally Posted By ecdc <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/07/14/debt.talks/index.html?hpt=hp_t1" target="_blank">http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITI...pt=hp_t1</a> Looks like Obama is sick of being the only grown-up in the room and went off on Eric Cantor last night. About bloody time.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>The truth is they WILL increase the debt ceiling, whether or not their petulant demands are met.<< I wish I could be so sure. From what I can see, it's finally starting to sink in with some of them that there are more important issues at stake than their next election. That they are representatives, not order-takers. That part of the job is to save the uninformed fools in their district from their own ignorance. I'm not sure it's sinking in with enough of them. When you elect irrational nutcases, you get irrational nutcase behavior. The pundits seem to be expecting that some sort of anticlimactic deal is going to be reached before disaster strikes, and the can will be kicked one more time. But I'm not convinced that sanity has prevailed yet, at least not in the House. Right now the GOP has to find enough people willing to "fall on their sword" and vote for the debt ceiling increase. Do they have enough people like that?
Originally Posted By vbdad55 there are a few intelligent people in the room- throw the others out and settle this... Obama is an intelligent man- but really not that great a politician (and before people jump on me- that is not necessarily a negative thing - (he worked in a one party state for years and got everything he wanted- now he faces others who won't like him just because he IS from another party and he doesn;t have the experience to deal with it as well) -- gather the better minds from both sides and say - enough is enough - and get this done. I would never have the patience to work with some of these 'model' politicians
Originally Posted By vbdad55 Right now the GOP has to find enough people willing to "fall on their sword" and vote for the debt ceiling increase. Do they have enough people like that? ---- God I hope so-- but understand between the tea party and the usual right wing nut jobs-- those who do this will face ostracizing from their party. I just wish they would see that is not a bad thing -- find me what's left of the real GOP and start a 3rd party now-- leave the current group to the baggers and right wing fanatics.. it might take a few elections to get up and running( then again it might not)- and let's get a people's party - with fiscal sanity and social compassion. I know i am asking for a lot but one can hope
Originally Posted By vbdad55 >>The truth is they WILL increase the debt ceiling, whether or not their petulant demands are met.<< I hae to admit I too am no longer sure on this..I think some of these idiots are willing to bring down the entire house of cards. I can't help but think of Charleton Heston on the beach yelling " They blew the whole damn thing up " !
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Right now the GOP has to find enough people willing to "fall on their sword" and vote for the debt ceiling increase. Do they have enough people like that?> They might just go with the McConnell plan and cede power to Obama to do it unilaterally. It's simultaneously ceding power and providing cover for Republicans to say "Well, *I* didn't vote to increase the debt ceiling. That's all on Obama." >>The truth is they WILL increase the debt ceiling, whether or not their petulant demands are met.<< I wish I could be sure of that, too (if they don't go with the McConnell suggestion). I think the leadership, with the possible exception of Cantor, would eventually grow up and do it. But I also think there are people both on the back benches and emerging as sort of "mid-level" leaders who would actually welcome default, either to precipitate a second fall-off-the-cliff that they could blame on Obama, or because they don't truly understand what could happen, or because they think that will force the draconian cuts they want, or some combination of the three.
Originally Posted By gadzuux The reason for my certitude that they'll lift the ceiling is that the GOP has always been the puppets of the moneyed interests - that hasn't changed. The problem is that the putative "leader" of the house republicans - Boehner - cannot effectively lead these teabag representatives. Some people say that it's because Boehner is a "bad" speaker, and maybe so, but it's like herding cats - they're not going to do anything they don't want to. But I still have a belief that reality will set in. The 'moneyed' side of the GOP is far more concerned about possible default than they ever were about increased taxes - after all, there are a lot worse things that can happen to the wealthy than increased taxes, and they know it, even if the House GOPers don't. And it's not just the wealthy who would be hammered by this, all interest rates would shoot up - loans, credit cards, mortgages - everything - for everybody. The payment on the US debt interest alone would cost the gov't billions of additional dollars. It would also wreak havoc in all other nations, since we're the largest global economy by far. So essentially it would plunge the entire planet into fiscal chaos with no way to backtrack and undo the damage. In fact, the end result of default appears to be so cataclysmic - for everybody - that it simply cannot happen. One way or another the debt limit WILL be raised, and very soon. If the GOP will not do it, the president will have to invoke some kind of emergency power and do it by executive order, but I really don't think it will come to that. Which brings me back to my original point - the republicans WILL vote to increase the limit, because in the end they have to. Which makes this entire charade of ultimatums and demands especially galling. If they were hoping to gain some kind of political traction out of this gambit for 2012, they couldn't have been more wrong. If they were hoping to make the president look weak and ineffective, they've only managed to make themselves look weak and ineffective. Which means that on top of everything else, it's political malpractice. Not only can the republicans not be trusted to govern effectively, or to be a responsible steward of the nation's economy, they can't even manage to position themselves politically. They've done massive damage to their own reputations, and all of this has been completely unnecessary. This didn't need to be a "crisis" - they could have just passed the vote like they've done every other time for the past fifty years and moved on to other issues. But instead they decided to exploit the vote "for their own benefit" and ended up making themselves look radically irresponsible and completely insane. Which they are.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Which brings me back to my original point - the republicans WILL vote to increase the limit, because in the end they have to. > But of course they've made voting to raise it (always a simple matter of "housekeeping" before, with some minor posturing) seem like such a demonically bad thing, that they don't want to. Hence the McConnell suggestion.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I wish I had the optimism that somehow the tea baggers will come to their senses. They have set this whole thing up as win/lose -- nothing in between. And I really think that these people are so zealous that they would drive us over a cliff in the name of their misguided principles, laughing all the way. This is what happens when people don't bother to vote. The tea baggers got into power because they generated extremist voters to vote, while millions of the rest of us sat on our butts during the midterms. This is the result of people tuning out of politics and world events. You can trust that things will somehow work themselves out for the best -- there are some very strange people with strange ideas, and keeping them out of power is the only way to stop the kind of mindless madness we're all facing at the moment.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 <The tea baggers got into power because they generated extremist voters to vote, while millions of the rest of us sat on our butts during the midterms. This is the result of people tuning out of politics and world events. < As someone who works his butt off for items like school board elections / referendums etc that normally come in non-major election timeframes.. the apathy this countries voters have ( sometimes we get 15% turnouts )- makes me ill...sometimes we get what we deserve
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>sometimes we get what we deserve<< Totally agree. I know people who never, ever vote. And yet they often wail the loudest about how government doesn't work. Democracy requires active participants. When people are apathetic and lethargic, you get something entirely different.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I can't help but think of Charleton Heston on the beach yelling " They blew the whole damn thing up " !<< Right? That's what it feels like.
Originally Posted By mawnck Stan Collender is an economist blogger who got invited to speak to the Tea Party caucus after the 2010 election, and saw first hand what the situation is with the GOP and the Tea Party. And he's predicting a less than 50/50 chance that they'll allow the debt ceiling to be raised by August 2nd. Why? Because these people really really really really are nuts. What could slap them back to reality? >>In the back of my mind I keep remembering something Peter Orszag said, which was you were going to need a combination of Democrats and Republicans in the House, and the only way that vote would be acceptable for Boehner to schedule is after negative market reaction that spooks people. It’s not unlike how TARP got through. The average member of Congress has got to be sitting there saying if I don’t vote for this, it’ll be a disaster, and if I do vote for it, it’ll be a disaster. So without the negative market effect, there’s not enough pressure. But remember Bachmann is running around saying there will be no negative effect. << >>And remember the general idea on Wall Street right now is that there will be a deal because there’s always a deal.<< A scary read: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-tea-party-and-the-debt-ceiling/2011/07/11/gIQAHaldEI_blog.html" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/...log.html</a>
