Tick, tick. August 2nd is the Debt Limit Armageddon. Or Not.

Boehner's bill passed the House 218-210. One more then the majority he needed.

I said Obama and his democrat minions are holding this country and all Americans hostage

I think that Boehner and the leadership of the party, knowing the bill will fail in the Senate, have orchestrated a deal allowing 20-22 House Repubs to vote No. That allows them to remain loyal to their conservative roots in their home districts. But the bill needs to pass to cover Boehner's butt and shift the blame to the Dems and the Senate when Reid brings it up there. (Thursday)

roger, I'm talking about the damage they have done to the world economy. Do you know of any group that has accomplished as much damage that wasn't a terrorist group?

By Perry Bacon Jr., Published: April 13

It was billed as President Obama’s big speech on reducing the federal budget deficit. But the Wednesday afternoon address sounded at times like the speech he did not give when he launched his reelection campaign last week.

After months of carefully negotiating with congressional Republicans, often annoying his liberal base along the way, Obama repeatedly attacked the budget released by the House GOP last week in a sharp, partisan tone he has largely avoided since November’s elections.

Full Speech | President Obama laid out his plans to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years on Wednesday, saying that it was necessary to use a scalpel instead of a machete to cut costs and that both parties need to come together to do so by the end of June.

In presenting his vision for reducing the budget deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years, he argued the difference between the Republican budget and his own vision was not just about policy but a larger philosophical gulf.

In the speech, he used as many words to attack the GOP proposal as to lay out his own.

“A 70 percent cut in clean energy, a 25 percent cut in education, a 30 percent cut in transportation, cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year,” Obama said. “That’s the proposal. These aren’t the kinds of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget. These aren’t the kind of cuts that the fiscal commission proposed. These are the kinds of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America that I believe in and, I think, you believe in.”

It's really, really, funny that you mention Obama, who is the only one who has given into the GOP-tea party demands. What did he get in return? "NO!"

The New York Times
July 29, 2011
It’s Up to the Senate

It was hard to imagine that the House bill to raise the debt limit, and slash and burn the economy, could get any worse. But on Friday it did.

The bill, which narrowly passed the House with 218 Republican votes and none from Democrats, would allow the government to keep borrowing only until November or December and then require both the Senate and the House to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the limit could be raised again.

That’s right, in a bid to win over his recalcitrant caucus, Speaker John Boehner agreed to go through all of this again in just a few months — and then hold the country hostage to passing an amendment that will never get the two-thirds of each chamber that it would need. The bill was, as it should have been, promptly dismissed by the Senate.

Now the only hope left for avoiding default on Tuesday is for the Senate to piece together a compromise that can pass with bipartisan majorities in both chambers. It will undoubtedly cut far too much, at a time when the economy can’t afford it. It will contain no needed revenue increases and could still trigger a downgrade. But it would eliminate the imminent threat of financial chaos.

For six months, House leaders catered to their Tea Party members, perhaps hoping that they could turn them to a reasonable path, or at least count on their votes in a clinch. That wish crumbled on Thursday night. At least two dozen Republicans, mostly freshmen, adamantly refused Mr. Boehner’s pleas to support his bill — his last shot at keeping the House’s positions relevant.

Instead of worsening the bill, Mr. Boehner could have negotiated with Democrats to construct one with a chance of resolving the standoff and passing in the Senate. But concerned largely with preserving his position, he gave in to the very lawmakers who have been insisting for weeks that the Obama administration is lying about the coming default. That argument alone should have given him pause about giving in to their demands.

The Senate quickly tabled the revised House bill. The legislation being prepared by Harry Reid, the majority leader, would raise the debt ceiling through March 2013. That avoids another showdown, and potential meltdown, in the middle of the crucial retail shopping period and at the start of the presidential campaign cycle, when Washington will be even less open to rational compromise.

The bill would cut the deficit by about $2.7 trillion over the next decade. Unlike the House bill, it spares Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from benefit cuts, and counts the drawdown of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan as part of its savings, easing the burden on domestic programs. Unfortunately, it surrenders to the unrealistic Republican demand of no new revenues, cutting too much spending at a time when the economy is still in serious need of government help.

Mr. Reid is negotiating with Republicans on their demands for an enforcement mechanism to make sure the deficit cuts take place in the later years of the deal. Both parties envision a bipartisan panel that could recommend cuts; if those are not adopted, some kind of automatic cuts would go into effect. This automatic knife can be dangerous, arbitrarily cutting without regard to economic circumstances. Democrats should insist that taxes and revenues are not ruled out as a way to lower the deficit.

The House planned a deliberately obstructionist vote on Saturday against the Reid bill, but some Senate Republicans are signaling they are willing to agree to this more reasonable framework. If enough of them can join the Democrats and ignore the bleats of the Tea Party, it may still be possible to avert calamity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/opinion/its-up-to-the-senate.html

New York Times
July 29, 2011
That Aug. 2 Deadline? It May Be Impossible, Veteran Lawmakers Say
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — Here is advice from veterans of past budget battles in Congress that went to the brink: This time, be afraid. Be very afraid.

The seemingly unbridgeable impasse between the two parties as the deadline for raising the nation’s debt limit approaches has Tom Daschle losing sleep, as he never did when he was a Senate Democratic leader in the mid-1990s and Congressional Republicans forced government shutdowns rather than compromise on spending cuts.

“That was nothing compared to this. That was a shutdown of the government; this could be, really, a shutdown of the entire economy,” Mr. Daschle said. “You can’t be too hyperbolic about the ramifications of all this.”

Democrats and Republicans with legislative experience agree that even if both sides decided Saturday to raise the $14.3 trillion borrowing ceiling and to reduce future annual deficits, it would be extremely difficult for the compromise measure to wend its way through Congress before Tuesday’s deadline, given Congressional legislative procedures.

But such a bipartisan deal seemed virtually impossible on Friday, as House Republicans approved their bill and dug in deeper against compromise with President Obama.

Any possibility of avoiding an economy-shaking default seemed to rest on hopes of a so-far nonexistent compromise in the Senate — between the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and the Republican minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — that could pass by Tuesday and then be sent to the House.

That would force Speaker John A. Boehner to decide at the 11th hour whether to hold a House vote on a bill that would not get many Republican votes, forcing him to rely on Democrats and perhaps further weaken his leadership, or to risk blame for an economic crisis.

“He’s going to have to pass it with Democratic votes. That’s going to be a tough decision, but he doesn’t have any choice at that point, particularly if the markets are reacting,” said Tom Davis, a former House Republican leader from Virginia. “That’s the position they’ve got themselves in.”

But, he added: “The stakes are much higher here. If interest rates start spiking up, it’s going to cost us a lot more than anything you could save. They’re playing brinkmanship with our credit rating. That’s not very smart.”

Mr. Davis recalled his vote in late September 2008 for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that President George W. Bush sought to rescue a financial system near collapse. “I hated TARP, but no one had a better alternative,” he said.

But most of his Republican colleagues opposed the rescue measure and helped defeat it, sending the stock markets tumbling even as the vote was taking place. That reaction forced the Republicans to retreat, and days later a bailout bill carried on a second try.

Mr. Davis predicted that the current standoff over the debt limit could end similarly. “When the markets react” — as early as Monday if there is no compromise in sight — “I think the politicians will act,” he said.

Yet many of the Congressional Republicans who won office last November with the help of the antigovernment Tea Party movement, giving their party control of the House, campaigned on promises to resist any government bailouts and to oppose an increase in the debt limit. Some lawmakers have been quoted describing the debt-limit vote as a way to make up for Republicans’ support of the bank rescue three years ago.

Against that backdrop, major business groups issued statements on Friday reiterating their calls for a deal, but with a heightened note of alarm.

The Business Roundtable, an association of executives of some of the country’s largest corporations, sent a letter to the White House and Congress warning that “inaction poses an unacceptable financial risk to the nation’s economic growth and job creation” — this on a day when the latest economic data confirmed that growth slowed in the second quarter with the fallout of Japan’s tsunami, Europe’s debt crisis and upheaval in the Middle East.

“Failure to Raise Debt Ceiling Could Turn the Economy Back Into a Recession” was the headline on a statement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“I’ve never seen people genuinely worried like this,” said Vin Weber, a former representative from Minnesota, now a Republican strategist who has been meeting with other Republicans, including lawmakers, this week. “This time you have people who genuinely don’t know what the outcome is going to be, and they’re worried that the wrong outcome could genuinely be disastrous.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/us/politics/30clock.html?hp

His new name should be wishy-washy Obama. No backbone.