The new Republican House Majority

@cicerone imposter,

ci, that's not even a good try by you.
You constantly ignore the fact that the dems controlled the house & senate the last two years of GW's presidency.
The left laid the groundwork for this big ass deficit Obama has recently accumulated.

1 Reply

@H2O MAN,

So BUSH had no part in it beacuse he was only the president, but now OBAMA is responsible fully because he is THE PRESIDENT?

PAssing the buck seems to be a GOP virtue. We wont get out of this until we recognize that big military "off the budget" expenditures of close to 5 years of 3/4 billion a day -do add up to soemreal money (as SEn Dirksen used to say), and Bush's pledge to make suire that ALL AMERICANS OWN THEIR OWN HOMES got the second great depression off and running.

There was a reason why the AMericans kicked a lot of the GOP out of congress in 2006.

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@farmerman,

On the budget, Obama has Republicans cornered

Quote:

placed House Speaker John Boehner in exactly the position he wanted to avoid. Obama’s offer is more than reasonable. A $30 billion reduction, after all, was the initial Republican negotiating position back in early February. Given that Republicans control only the House, this level of cuts would normally be viewed as a remarkable success. But a portion of the Republican conference longs for a confrontation that results in a government shutdown, preferring a fight over a victory.

...

The less-than-serious faction of the Republican Party is intent on squeezing more savings out of the 2011 budget or pursuing a government shutdown as an end in itself. Some of this bloc is composed of House freshmen, who share the unrealistic expectations of the Tea Party base — the undoing of modern government by one-half of one branch of that government. Others are more senior members of the Republican caucus — representatives such as Mike Pence and Michele Bachmann — who seek to raise their profiles by establishing themselves as rebel leaders.

Even by the most exacting conservative standards, the contrast of ambition and sophistication should be clear. Ryan Republicans are talking about trillions in eventual entitlement savings that would release America from perpetual debt and allow some room for future discretionary spending. They are proposing a series of broad structural reforms, each of which will be a plank in the 2012 Republican platform. Pence Republicans seek billions in savings achieved through a strategy that, in 1995, helped rescue the Clinton presidency. Their policy platform shows all the creativity and strategic positioning of a stop sign.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

No, I am not; the issue is called negotiation to arrive at the best options in this environment. The GOP wants to cut social programs including Medicare to give the richest a further tax cut from 35% to 25%. That's irresponsible from every angle while our deficit continues to grow, and our infrastructure (schools and roads), health care, and other safety nets for Americans are decimated.

I don't know about you, but I worry for ALL Americans. I prefer not to be engaged in wars half way around the world, and with that money to spend on our own country.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Paul Ryan, budget guy for the House Republicans, has released his budget proposal; and the long and short of it is that his plan is to save money by ending medicare as we know it.

Cycloptichorn

Obamacare isn't going to "bend the cost curve" as its Democrat apoligists deceitfully encouraged the public to believe. There isn't enough potential tax revenue available through increasing rates on high earners and corpoorations to pay the projected deficits of our emtitlement programs. The only escape from a financial collapse is in restructuring these programs.

I count this as wrong, right, wrong. You are totally incorrect on the first point. You are totally correct on the second one. And then go right back to being incorrect on the third.

Your first assertion, that HC Reform won't 'bend the cost curve,' is without merit. Many economists have predicted that this is exactly what it will do. What more, the Republicans - no matter what they want to do to Medicare - have NO PLAN to address costs at all. Ryan's budget certainly doesn't do so; it just says that he doesn't want to pay the higher costs when they go up.

Your second one is perfectly correct. We can't pay for our future by taxing only the rich and corporations - though that's a good start. EVERYONE'S taxes need to go up, not just the rich's; middle-class taxes need to rise as well in order to afford our future.

Your third point is completely fallacious. If we had modest tax increases - back to Clintonian levels - then we don't need to eliminate Medicare or SS to ensure either programs' survival, and as people have clearly signaled that they like both of these programs and want them to stay, that is what we should be doing.

Quote:

Unfortunately government "benefits" become a political addiction, creating well-organized highly motivated lobbies of beneficiaries who will risk everything to preserve what they have come to believe is their due.

People 'believe it's their due' because they've been paying taxes to support these programs their entire lives, programs which have been very successful in providing a safety net for our society. They feel that they have a moral right to it. And the lobby you are speaking of is known as 'everyone.' I don't know if that counts as a lobby.

Quote:

The recent example of Portugual

Full stop. Our current situation has nothing to do with Portugal at all and you know it.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Lots of non-obvious, and unproven categorical statements there.

What is the difference between our looming financial crisis and that of Portugual. That might be a good place to start. In both cases the public is resisting the restraints in spending needed to avoid a public debt/bond sale crisis, after a period of growing addiction to social welfare spending they really couldn't afford (no matter whether they believed they were entitled to them or not). A key difference is that ours is the reference currency for the world and theirs is not. However, we are seeing that the world is willing to shrug that difference off verry quickly.

Who will bail out the United States?

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@farmerman,

President Bush had a hand in some of it and I didn't claim otherwise, but the left got their huge spending spree started two years before Bush was replaced and PrezBO's democrats have done nothing to limit spending - in fact Obama democrats are spending more than all others, but they never even offered up a budget for 2011. They all need to be fired.

And what do we have to show for all of this radical left wing spending?

What did it buy we the people?

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@DrewDad,

PrezBO does not have republicans cornered - he lies.

Why is it that Obama democrats never offered up a budget for 2011 ???

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Lots of non-obvious, and unproven categorical statements there.

Yeah, I already discussed the problems with your post, you don't have to agree with me.

Quote:

What is the difference between our looming financial crisis and that of Portugual. That might be a good place to start.

Well, to begin with, our 'crisis' is not only 20-30 years in the future - have you even looked at the charts? I doubt it - it can be solved with quite modest tax increases and adjustments to the programs in question.

I'd say that those are two MAJOR differences right there.

Quote:

In both cases the public is resisting the restraints in spending needed to avoid a public debt/bond sale crisis, after a period of growing addiction to social welfare spending they really couldn't afford (no matter whether they believed they were entitled to them or not).

We CAN afford our spending. You just don't want to pay for it for ideological reasons.

Quote:

A key difference is that ours is the reference currency for the world and theirs is not. However, we are seeing that the world is willing to shrug that difference off verry quickly.

Who will bail out the United States?

I have seen zero evidence that foreign investment in the US is drying up. Perhaps you could present some? No?

You are making a variety of Chicken Little-ish predictions here and using that alarmism to push social changes to programs you disagree with ideologically. But the numbers simply don't agree with you. It's a FACT that modest tax increases push the viability of these social programs out for another 50 years. You simply don't want to see modest tax increases happen, and instead claim that the programs 'must be eliminated.' You haven't made the case for that.

Cycloptichorn

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

Who will bail out the United States?

You mean all those countries that the US plundered, that's who you're asking about, Gob? You know, somehow, I just don't think so.

Try cutting the enormous, obscene spending that goes towards the US military, which, in turn, goes a long way towards making the world a much more unstable and dangerous place.

Sadly the vast majority of this danger is all heaped upon others. If it struck equally at the purveyors of this endless cycle of greed, illegal invasions, support for genocidal actions, US government support for destabilizing countries and governments, US support for terrorists, and US state terrorism, then maybe you would be looking to cut the spending where it really needs to be cut.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT, They are all good points; if we spend less on our military, that will pay for most programs that are actually directed toward our own citizens. That's the kind of security our military will never "buy."

I would really like to see how much our country has spend on our military in all the wars after WWII that didn't accomplish much except create more animosity towards our country as invaders and occupiers.

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@Cycloptichorn,

georgeob1 wrote:

The recent example of Portugual

Wouldn't the EU bailout of Portugal more closely resemble, say, the U.S. Feds being called upon to rescue one of our States, though? Portugal is a relatively small country (10M people, about the size of Indiana), so I don't see the same hardship that a larger country, i.e. Spain or Italy, would impose on the taxpayers of the EU countries.

It's also been made clear by the EU that any bailout would force Portugal into a series of structural reforms, along with austerity measures (whether they like it or not) as pre-conditions.

1 Reply

@Irishk,

Portugal really ought to tell them to go to hell and just declare bankruptcy.

I should point out that they just REJECTED, in a national referendum, terms that the EU is now calling 'starting points only.'

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Oh, my. Thanks for the update.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Their "rejection" of needed reforms won't count for much when the foreign money stops rolling in.

A very good argument for taking early action to avoid such a crisis.

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@georgeob1,

Your use of a hatchet is not rational when a scalpel is sufficient.

The GOP is holding up this budget process by demanding the defunding for women's health for some $300 million dollars from a $1.7 trillion budget.

The GOP has no problem spending money for wars. Here's what the wars are costing this country.

http://costofwar.com/en/

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Their "rejection" of needed reforms won't count for much when the foreign money stops rolling in.

A very good argument for taking early action to avoid such a crisis.

So let it stop. They would be better served by that then these shitty austerity plans, which are guaranteed to screw their country for a long time. Ireland saw the truth of this and shitcanned their government for daring to do the same thing.

No response to my earlier - and dare I say, trenchant - points that a) our situation is nothing like Portugal in any way, shape or fashion, and b) that medicare (and SS for that matter) are in no danger of sinking us as long as we make modest increases to taxation? At all?

Cycloptichorn

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@cicerone imposter,

http://costofwar.com/en/

I tried to embed this in a new discussion. It was a long shot, didn't think it would work.

Every, roughly 15 seconds, another 100 grand is spent. The total, since 2001, is now at,

$1,117,238,***,***

Those asterisks represent that it's meaningless to try to write a number, it changes so fast.

Consider that that's only the monetary element. It doesn't consider the vast amount of suffering and death that two innocent countries have been subjected to by the duplicity of the US, the UK and some other perfidious governments.

Sorry, I was mistaken. It's now at,

$1,117,236,***,***

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT, What is shows is that the GOP prefer to use money to kill women than to use it for their health.

Makes a lot of sense if you're demented.

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@H2O MAN,

H2O MAN wrote:

Give the democrats some well deserved credit, they have
worked really ******* hard to make this shut-down a reality.

If they give away the house they won't get re-elected, and they have given too much already... It is repubs who are looking for the brink... The dems should show them where it is and dare them to step over the edge... And if the dems have one man bone in their chicken bodies they won't start up the government till the repubs get on their knees, and beg, and give back everything they already had a deal on... Shut it down, and let it die... It is time to write a new constitution.

0 Replies

The new Republican House Majority

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