Sorry for posting negative things about your hero. I know, it's tough when you realize that the person you admire so much is really a negative influence on society.
Dude, I don't even care what you write about any more. If I knew how to upload a pie graph, I would upload one for you that looked like a bowl and was broken down as; MasterShake29 cares about: 3% fiscal policy 2% foreign policy 5% partisan politics 90% ********IN' WEED, MAN!!! So, again... [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je4cbBY0R0Y&feature=related"]Ronald Reagan says STFU‏ - YouTube[/ame]
So many great minds are focused on fiscal policy right now that maybe MasterShake29 figures it's covered.
David Brooks most recent editorial is a sobering message for Republicans and all libertarian-leaning deficit hawks. Obama offered Republicans a great deal on the debt ceiling and they turned it down because their misguided sense of ideological purity trumps their concern with running the government. Brooks is not an uber-conservative for sure, and he will usually call it as he sees it, even if that goes against conservative orthodoxy. This editorial is the most recent where he takes Republicans to task for their handling of the debt ceiling. His editorial before last claims: My question to everyone: would you have taken the deal? If not, why? The Democrats are willing to play ball, so what exactly do Republicans and conservatives want?
To pick up "their" ball and have the Democrats go home. Who was it said "these people aren't interested in governing-- they intend to rule?"
I wouldn't. There's zero guarantee that any of those spending cuts actually happen, they are not legally binding on anyone. Not raising the debt ceiling guarantees something will happen for certain relatively quickly.
Well this one seems easy for Obama. The Republicans courtesy of Grover Norquist committed political suicide. They have a 21% national approval rating on this item. Meanwhile, Obama is on record as having offered a massive cut in spending and a bipartisan solution. So now he should do the backdoor deal offered by the Senate and move on. He'll have the glow of being a centrist and he won't even have committed to anything.
For some odd reason the GOP thinks that they can force a total surrender by Obama on this issue just like they tried with health care, and we see how they failed there. What is it with the GOP and the word compromise anyway?
They want to not be primaried by a Club For Growth funded candidate. I, personally, think that Republican politicians whose main interest is staying in office are acting pretty rationally. You make a great point. These grand bargains are dumb as shit, because this Congress can't bind the hands of the next Congress without putting in supermajority requirements that are probably unconstitutional anyway. It's a symptom of our dysfunctional politics that literally nobody with any stroke seems to realize this. Not Boehner, not Cantor, not Reid, not Pelosi, not Obama, not any political journos, nobody.
Not so fast. The amount of capital taken out of the economy (and not put in anywhere else) would mean that, if a $2.5 trillion plan is what we get, that means $250 billion per year (on average) would just vanish from our economy...out of a $14 trillion GDP, that might not be so bad, maybe just a one or two quarter dip before markets re-adjust. If the 'grand bargain' goes through ($4.5 trillion/10 years), we'd see roughly double that just disappear from the economy, that's a little over 3% of the economy...THAT would cause a lot of problems as the severity of those cuts might cause such long-term uncertainty for seniors, health markets, the military, and markets that depend on those three items could take us all the way into full-blown depression.
I've never been a huge Obama fan, but the above characterization is ludicrous. Sure, and the best way to force Congress to spend money on infrastructure is to blow it up. No, a depression more likely. The effect of a US default (even a selective default) is like to be really severe. At the moment US Treasuries are seen to be so safe we're paying negative interest on some of them. This means people are happy to lend us money and receive less money later. We should be taking advantage of this not forcing ourselves into another financial crisis. If the uncertainty over the debt ceiling hasn't led to uncertainty roiling the markets, why would a spending cut do it? For someone who supposedly reads Krugman you're making his despised "confidence fairy" argument anyway.
Sure, but that's because the Republicans have made this a talking point for so long their constituents (and some of the Republicans themselves) now believe it. You can only keep repeating something so long before you actually start thinking it's true.
Right, but trying to read this GOP mess it's hard to tell if they are going to break and come back to the table for a deal, assuming the 4 trillion deal is still on the table. Is the GOP having to shape the message because their constituency doesn't want them to compromise or do they prefer the current take-it-or-leave-it message?
I agree, but was trying not to be pessimistic. The Tea Party/GOP echo chamber bubble on this is just epic.
IT'S OKAY BECAUSE WE'LL STILL SERVICE OUR DEBTS AND GRANDMA WILL STILL GET SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS. I SWEAR! Or so I'm told. Don't mind Moody's or Standards & Poor's. What do they do other than control credit ratings?
Remember when the Tea Party was a grass-roots, nonpartisan movement? Of course it never was entirely, maybe not mostly. But there definitely were spontaneous elements. Today, I can't tell the difference between the Tea Party, The Wall Street Journal Op-Eds, and GOP platform discussions. Three peas in a pod.
You've got a significant portion -- somewhere around a quarter -- of the Republican House members' belonging to the so-called "Hell No" Caucus, who oppose the raising of the debt ceiling under any circumstances. Now, I think that that stance is crazy as hell, but they apparently got themselves elected and presumably want to stay in office, so apparently there's a lot of people out there, more in some Congressional districts than in others, that think this is a good idea. And you've got the rest of the Republican House members saying, "I don't want to have to run against one of those people next spring." Oh, I think that the politicians all realize this, but at the same time, they all realize that all of this is political theater to start rallying the masses to their side for 2012 than it is about actual policy. Everybody in those rooms knows that the debt ceiling will be raised, everybody in those rooms knows that these grand bargains are essentially unenforceable, but they gotta do it because the politics of the situation demand it. However, I don't think that many of the political journalists know or care. And really, they don't have to. Talking about policy doesn't move the needle. The political horse race does.
Do they have a choice? Listen, Obama himself warned the GOP of this when he went head to head with congressional republicans on health care (and pretty much wiped the floor with them rhetorically). He said back then that it is kind of hard to call him a socialist, fascist, communist, government take over, death panel guy to their constituents and then sit down at the table to negotiate. The sad truth is that Obama really is centrist and even slightly right of center at times. From a policy stand point, he is about the best republicans, conservatives and business interested persons could hope for in a democratic president. Unfortunately, instead of saying, "this is someone we can work with" -- even during a period of absolute crisis -- they made the decision before he was even inaugurated that they would not work with him on anything and that they would paint him as the liberal devil to their own voters. Politically, they succeeded in getting the house back in the off year election, and fittingly, that "victory" might very well be the thing that will be their own downfall in 2012. To date, this is the least accomplished congress in United States history. They have accomplished less more than a quarter of the way through their run than the "Do Nothing" congress of 1948. And this first half year is really the time they should have been able to get things done as it is farthest from the next election. "Where are the jobs mr. president?" Indeed Speaker Boehner, where are they? Your time as speaker is desperately slipping away and you have not passed a single jobs bill. Not one. Not even an infrastructure bill that even the Chamber of Commerce desperately wants passed in total agreement with democrats as well. So, in sum, they made a deal with the devil by demonizing the current president to grab as much power as they could in two years. But that deal prevents them from doing anything as their popularity (such as it was) continues to nose dive. Sully Sulenberg couldn't pull them out of this dive. Now, they have taken their issue . . . their one shining issue . . . the debt and spending . . . and they have lost the battle to Obama. JohnR is exactly right. The American people overwhelmingly would support the massive package that includes big spending cuts AND 1 trillion in new revenues. They overwhelmingly believe that this is fair and a sharing of the burden. David Brooks is also right that mainstream republicans will shed tears for decades over the deal that they HAD in front of themselves and let slip away. Lawrence O'Donnell was also right that Obama played rope a dope with these mopes and used them like a wet rag. He started from the position of "raise the debt ceiling with no other action" moved his position to where HE was the one addressing our massive debts with the republicans saying "no" and then ending up with pretty much what he wanted in the first place. I'm concerned about our debt. I think we should let all of the bush tax cuts expire. I think we should cut spending, particularly at the pentagon AND we should make some much needed reforms to medicare and social security. I believe it was our own Dr. Jay who talked about ways to do this and I was generally in support. We pay for things we know will work and let individuals or supplemental insurance pay for things we don't know will work. So, I hope what I said way, way back in this debate comes true. The republicans will politically screw themselves. Obama gets re-elected. Then, Obama gets everyone to the table to really address our long term debt early in his second term as his last legacy thing. I believe he wants to. He is pragmatic. He sees the junior high level math required to show we are on a really bad course. And at that point, republicans will no longer be able to "get" Obama and will have been screwed enough by the tea party wing that they actually will do what is best for the country. How's that for optimism.
Was just recalling back in the day when a big chunk of Dems depended on the unions. They might not agree in private with the unions but they had to support their demands publicly, or they'd lose the next primary. That's where the Republicans now are with the Tea Party.