"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
Congressional Republicans are vowing that before they will agree to raise the current $14.25 trillion federal debt ceiling — a step that will become necessary in as little as five weeks — President Obama and Senate Democrats will have to agree to far deeper spending cuts for next year and beyond than those contained in the six-month budget deal agreed to late Friday night that cut $38 billion and averted a government shutdown.
Republicans have also signaled that they will again demand fundamental changes in policy on health care, the environment, abortion rights and more, as the price of their support for raising the debt ceiling.
“We want to see real structural, cultural-type changes tied to this debt ceiling. We’re not interested in a one-off kind of savings, or anything small,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney, a first-term Republican from South Carolina. “There has got to be game-changing kinds of changes to get us to vote for it.”
He dismissed warnings about default as “just posturing,” and said Democrats should bear the responsibility for passing any measure to increase the borrowing limit.
“It’s their debt,” he said. “Make them do it. That’s my attitude.”
Of the nearly $14.2 trillion in debt, roughly $5 trillion is money the government has borrowed from other accounts, mostly from Social Security revenues, according to federal figures. Several major policies from the past decade when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress — tax cuts, a Medicare prescription-drug benefit and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — account for more than $3.2 trillion.
The recession cost more than $800 billion in lost revenues from businesses and individuals and in automatic spending for safety-net programs like unemployment compensation. Mr. Obama’s stimulus spending and tax cuts added about $600 billion through the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
Once the limit is reached, the Treasury Department would not be able to borrow as it does routinely to finance federal operations and roll over existing debt; ultimately it would be unable to pay off maturing debt, putting the United States government — the global standard-setter for creditworthiness — into default.
The repercussions in that event would be as much economic as political, rippling from the bond market into the lives of ordinary citizens through higher interest rates and financial uncertainty of the sort that the economy is only now overcoming, more than three years after the onset of the last recession.
Labels: America Gone Mad, america R.I.P., budget, debt, repub
I have a slight disagreement with you saying that "provable facts and utter horseshit are given equal credibility". Provable facts are treated as if written by J.K. Rowling or JRR Tolkien. Speaking of JRR Tolkien the dark lord Sauron seems to be in power and Washington DC seems to be Mordor. We do not have anyone willing to take the ring to Mount Doom for its destruction!
Utter horseshit is written on stone until disproved and then given the George Orwell 1984 treatment. We never said that, our opponents said that. Our opponents want to do that. Our opponents are doing that as we speak.
I now think of the US as an extremely ill person. Acute renal failure. No dialysis or transplant as the patient is too far gone for treatment. The toxins eventually cause the death of the person and are then released postmortem (causing the death of the empire).
http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2011/04/quote-of-day.html
Why the Democrats are so bad at hanging this on them is beyond me. But it's got to be done - over and over - until it finally sticks with at least that 5% of the electorate that can swing elections - and in some of those conservative districts where Tea Partiers hold sway.