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

It's because without some standards, no economy can survive.

I have never advocated for different rules for business and individuals.

The Democrats lost this debate, but that's not a surprise. The perception that the stimulus bill failed has given Republicans a slashing comeback for every spending plan: You guys tried it, it didn't work, let us try the opposite. Backed into a corner, Democratic senators and a Democratic president have agreed to discretionary spending cuts that they think will slow down economic growth.
It's not just Democrats who think this. As the latest, least-doomed version of the deal was hammered out, the New York Times' Binyamin Applebaum and Catherine Rampell were interviewing economists about the effects of looming cuts. "When you do fiscal adjustment in the near term," said IMF economist Paulo Mauro, "it does have an adverse impact on economic growth." An analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Vatican of debt angst-mongering, sighed at the silliness of forcing cuts through now, in a weak economy, when they would have been better timed during a boom. Why? Because spending cuts drive down growth in the short-term with the promise of growth in the long term.
Republicans dispute this. When they took charge in the House, they labeled their agenda "cut and grow." The buzz phrase lacked one thing: evidence. Stimulus money has dried up. New Republican governors have lived the gospel of budget cuts. Coincidentally enough, GDP growth is way down from expectations for the year so far. Job creation is weak; back in March, Moody's Analytics and Goldman Sachs predicted that spending cuts could have that effect. The Commerce Department points to the spending cuts as the culprit

I think that the UK experience plays into this, where the expected destruction of the economy on the basis of huge government spending cut back has not happened yet.

The cuts only started in April. Already we've had waves of industrial action. Growth is no way near what was predicted. Don't look to the UK for solutions, not with Osborne as chancellor.

you have no idea what kind of impact the slow-down in the US economy has on the rest of the world.

Dems are pushing Boehner to come up with at least 150 votes on the R side and will supplement the vote from there. Dems are not whipping their members but counting votes via an email survey

Cantor pushback to Reid: I can tell you flat out he is wrong -- I did not open the door to tax increases...now is not the time

The government is selling snake oil - again.

Look closely and this so-called "deal" on the debt ceiling crisis is a triumph of sleight-of-hand over substance.

Sunday night it was, "We will cut a trillion dollars in the first 10 years." By this morning a trillion had become $917 billion, which means we lost $83 billion in cuts overnight. Makes you afraid to go to bed.

In the first three years of the Obama presidency, the deficits will total about $4.2 trillion. Cutting $917 billion over 10 years, or $91 billion a year, is chump change.

Then there's the commission, another one. Remember the commission President Obama ordered to come up with answers to this stuff last year?

They did. Their report was full of a lot of good ideas. It was ignored by the president and Congress. But they want us to believe this commission will be different.

Baloney. There has been no attempt to address tax reform or entitlement reform. That will be left for "The Commission." My guess is they won't touch it anymore than the current crop of folks tackled it. And without those two things, we are doomed.

Supposedly there will be triggers in the legislation that will require additional cuts totaling $1.4 trillion across the board if the committee and Congress cannot agree. Color me skeptical.

We are facing more than $61 trillion of unfunded liabilities from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other obligations - $61 trillion.

There is no money to meet those obligations and our government knows it. But they have the unmitigated gall to march out Sunday night as though they had found a cure for cancer and expect us to break down in uncontrolled adulation. They make me ill.

They haven't even been appointed yet, but 'super committee' already tagged by K St as "Dirty Dozen"