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Debt Reduction Super Committee Fails To Agree
Hugh Pickens writes "VOA reports that the latest effort to cut the U.S. government's debt apparently has ended in failure as leaders of the special 12-member debt reduction committee plan to announce that they failed in their mandate from lawmakers to trim the federal debt by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Democrats and Republicans blame each other for the collapse of the effort. 'Our Democratic friends were never able to do the entitlement reforms,' said Republican Senator Jon Kyl. 'They weren't going to do anything without raising taxes.' Democratic Senator Patty Murray, one of the committee's co-chairs, says that the Republicans' position on taxes was the sticking point. 'The wealthiest Americans who earn over a million a year have to share too. And that line in the sand, we haven't seen Republicans willing to cross yet,' Now in the absence of an agreement, $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts to domestic and defense programs are set to take effect starting in January, 2013, and the lack of a deal will deprive President Barack Obama of a vehicle for extending a payroll tax cut and insurance benefits for unemployed Americans, which expire at the end of the year." (Though the official deadline for the committee's hoped-for plan is tomorrow — the 23d — they were to have provided it for review 48 hours prior.)
It is, of course, the same picture in Europe. Governments aren't capable of delivering pain to their core supporters and therefore can't deliver rational solutions to the most serious problems they face.
The answer is to swap governments - the Dutch elect the Greek government and the Greeks elect the Dutch government, for example. The electorate is sufficiently detached to evaluate the choices more dispassionately, but have sufficient incentive to be diligent as they know if they really cock it up they'll be shafted in turn.
Anyone want to draw lots?
Yep. They're more interested in "winning" for their party than helping the country. They were never going to agree.
OTOH the result is good. There's no way to decide who should get cuts because every department in government is lead by professional liars and bullshit artists. The only answer is to cut every single department by the same percentage.
No sig today...
What's the loss to them with a disagreement? NOTHING, because they can just blame the other side, and the people have no way to directly hold them personally accountable. No recalls, no real challenges, and most of them are in gerrymandered districts. If anything, they have a disincentive to try, since if they did betray their base, they'd probably get a more hardcore challenger.
They should have picked 100 or so, random American citizens (2 from every state, maybe some from the territories and district), and let them decide on a proposal.
I wouldn't have even mandated they be adults, or sane, or non-criminals(Not like Congress can complain), just not politicians or lawyers.
Radical idea I know, but I would just have it a proposal, which Congress would vote on. No law says where Congress gets their ideas. Which is why the ALEC exists.
Most politicians don't make their fortunes from government checks they make it from sweetheart deals and insider trading. Taking their pay away wouldn't hurt them in fact they would have to be extra corrupt to make up for the lost income.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
That's what they were supposed to do. The committee's mandate was to look at both where taxes could be raised, and spending cut.
Unfortunately, the Republicans are currently held hostage by the retard wing of the Republican Party, the Tea Tards, who are gung-ho on the "Grover Norquist Pledge" to never raise taxes on anyone who has enough money to donate to the Republican party and their various slush funds. Nevermind the fact that taxes on the rich are lower than they've been since the Truman administration. The end result is that the committee was going to fail, because the "party line" of the Republicans has grown under the "leadersship" of talk radio zealots like Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh to be "no compromise, no sensible solutions, our-taliban-way-or-anarchy."
David Frum said it best: the Republicans have completely lost touch with reality. I encourage you to read the whole thing, he makes a lot of sense and it explains quite well how insane the Republican party has gotten.
Raise taxes and cut spending. Do both. You can't agree?
The Republicans have signed a pledge that they will never vote to raise taxes on anybody for any reason whatsoever. If they violate that pledge, the head of the organization who created it can and will ensure they lose their seat by cutting off their campaign funding. So they really can't agree to raise taxes.
When it comes to spending cuts, the big-ticket items are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military. Any serious cuts need to affect one of those 4 items. The Democrats have been elected for decades with pledges to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid at all costs - it's their party's signature program for the last 75 years or so, so they really can't cut any of those. The Republicans have been elected for decades with pledges to protect military manufacturing jobs in their district, so they really can't cut any of those.
So in short, no they really can't, not without betraying everything they claim to stand for.
I am officially gone from
No. Tax increases are only a temporary solution at best..
Why? I'm German, and we live just fine with higher taxes (and free healthcare, truly public education, etc.)
Richard Nixon was denounced as a fascist by the baby boomers in the late 60s. What's he remembered for now other than Watergate? He opened diplomatic relations with Chinese Communists, instituted wage and price controls by the government to check inflation, and ended the war in Vietnam. He would be thrown out of the Republican Party today for being more liberal than Bill Clinton.
It is amazing how much the Republicans, and those same boomers, have shifted to the right.
In due time the US government will stop spending so much money, specialy on wars and entitlement.
Your Congress is just opting out of an ordered halting.
Rethinking email
Frum was hawkish on Iraq, because the evidence on Iraq was sound (at least, sound enough if you fell for Saddam's bluster, a point which has been lost on the "no blood for oil" crowd: Saddam was desperately trying to prop up the illusion that he had a WMD program for fear that the Saudis or Iranians would decide he'd outlived his usefulness and come in to take Iraq from him themselves). I didn't agree fully on Iraq, but I can look at the evidence that was on hand, the way Saddam had blustered for decades about his weaponry, the fact that he'd actually gassed portions of his own populace, and I can see where they were coming from at least.
But Frum's always been a rather moderate Republican otherwise. If you read the article fully, he goes over a lot of the policy positions that even GWB took that are now considered "heresy" in Tea Party circles.
It's a hard truth. Ronald Reagan famously quipped, when asked about his political party change, that "I didn't leave the Democratic party, the party left me." In their rush towards reactionary fascism over the past 4-5 years, the Republicans today have done the same to more than half their number.
I was actually impressed with the idea of automatic spending cuts, especially with Republicans putting their sacred cow of Defense spending on the table. I was certain the committee wouldn't reach a deal since they previously rejected the Democrat's offer of 3 to 1 spending cuts to revenue increases and with Obama finally showing some backbone, so I was really curious to see how the automatic cuts would go into effect legislatively.
Turns out the next step will be making sure those cuts don't happen. Because, while Congess can't agree on how to cut spending, they can apparently agree on how to keep spending in place.
I wish America had a system that allowed viable third party candidates... but, as it stands now,Americans will have to choose between corrupt and corrupter in 2012. We are so screwed.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
Au contraire...
Most of the Tea Party does NOT have a problem with increased taxes. We have a problem with increased taxes being wasted on more bloated ineffective programs and bailouts.
Were someone to come out in the political scene and say "I am raising taxes by 20%, but I am balancing the budget and paying off out debt. Not just reducing the amount we spend. But I'm going to send payments to our credit card too so our children are not burdened with out mistakes."
Tea Party would be all over that candidate.
But I think it's funny that you attack the Tea Party and Republicans, as out of touch. Are you really insinuating that the Democrats are not out of touch.
What about OWS. While I agree with a number of their issues, a lot is unrealistic. And as was proven out, regardless, America's debt rating was lowered.
How can it not be, when the U.S. debt is beginning to exceed the U.S. GDP
"The end result is that the committee was going to fail, because the "party line" of the Republicans."
Can we have a bit more intellectual honesty here? The end result is that the committee was going to fail because both parties are toeing the party line in order for it to fail so no real change can occur. Both the Dems & Repubs are mostly focus on maintaining the beneficial status quo that keeps them in power.
We need a 3rd entity (which I believe must come out of a combination of the Tea Party & OWS movements which share more in common with each other then they do with either the Dems/Repubs), an entity willing to raise taxes, eliminate tax loopholes, maintain liberty, and make painful cuts.
When you make $50,000 a year, and you've got $48,000 on the credit card. You need a raise and you need to turn off cable, internet, stop eating out, and pay off that credit card.
And the great thing is, once you do it, you find you've got about $1,000 a month more money to spend. If America got out of debt, we'd have nearly $400 billion to fund on programs. If we quit policing the world and pulled out of the middle-east, Germany, Japan, etc. We'd have around $800 billion to spend on programs. WITHOUT GOING INTO DEBT.
Saying "I won't take a deal that gives my opponent 9% of what he wants for the 91% of what I want, EVER!" is obstructionist and childish, plain and simple. There's no other way to see it.
Anyone who thought this committee would produce anything is completely out of touch with reality.
The United States government, world-wide banks and foreign governments all rely on our debt as a safe hedge against inflation in their own countries. Our debt is sold as inflation-protected treasury bonds that growing and stagnant economies alike buy to make sure catastrophes in their own economies/banks don't wipe out them out. And the need for the debt is increasing with increased world-wide trade, off-shore production and international humanitarian efforts (earthquakes, floods, etc.), hence why the treasury bond rates have declined by so much.
If the US government were to reduce the amount of debt it produces, treasury bond rates would increase not only increasing the cost of lending for consumers and banks, but also limiting the liquidity of money being moved around to hedge international risks which in turn would probably create another massive recession.
Unfortunately, the only way to fix things is to reduce the need for others to buy our debt. Either by helping to improve foreign economies (so they need less debt to hedge against their own inflation/deflation), improving the economy in our own country (so our people need less debt) by creating jobs or reducing taxes on those with the most debt (while giving incentives to reduce their debt), plug holes in tax code and banking regulations to stop rampant speculation on markets (that causes national and international instability as well as a massive amount of lending when investors buy things on margin), or reducing the over-accumulation of wealth into fewer hands (a few people with lots of money causes massive risks).
The first two needs require a massive amount of spending and the last two require a major overhaul of the tax code system, banking regulations and tax rates that give incentives for executives to leave money in the company and hire more people (like the income tax rates of the 1930s-50s and corporate tax rates aimed at median income targets). All are necessary, but it's very unlikely anymore than two will ever happen at once because of the two party political system in power.
Since one particular party doesn't want any increased spending and no tax increases at all, the economy is going to continue to suffer and if things aren't corrected the US' debt will become a worthless hedge for others that will lead to a run on the bank to turn it in, causing an economic collapse unlike the world has ever seen.
By the same token, everyone can agree that spending cuts are necessary. Except the Dems of course. Note that the biggest proponent of NOT cutting Defense Spending is Obama's Secretary of Defense, not the Republicans
Hold on...this isn't the Secretary of Defense suggesting a spending cuts? What about Obama suggesting Defense Spending Cuts Here. It seems your information is wrong. Every proposal that the Democrats have made included defense spending cuts. It was the Republicans who refused to cut defense spending.
The rest of your post I completely agree with though.
The problem is both sides of the "raise taxes" and "cut spending" battle is that both are a bit flawed.
There are simply not enough taxable dollars in that lofty 1% realm to honestly make a difference. It makes for great popular sentiment as it supposedly impacts those "other" people. I also haven't heard a single viable argument as to how it is better to have that money get into the hands of a government that has shown a complete inability to manage money rather than let that money continue to flow into the economy. It's not like the 1%, 5% or top 10% of the income brackets are just hoarding their cash. That's the very same money that's needed to get the real economy going.
The "cut spending" folks aren't actually all that serious either. They're talking about 10 year projections, which anyone who has watched a little c-span knows damn good and well only last until the next election cycle. Nobody is seriously talking about social security or removing tax dollars from the medical industry. Nobody is seriously talking about drawing down our military deployments around the globe. All the rest of the budget is pennies in comparison.
If both sides got everything they're looking for in some grand compromise it wouldn't matter. We have so over spent our capacity to generate revenue we'll likely need to drive up that debt limit again before the next election cycle. So long as the dollar remains the reserve currency of the planet we can continue to print money for our problems. Well, until the rest of the planet decides we really can't pay our debts.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Tax increases can actually help a bad economy.
What most people don't realize is that most of this "extra profit to invest in something else to create more jobs" is complete hogwash.
The stats are there to prove it by miles. They horde it and sit on it when times are bad because at the end of the day if they are making money NOW and they can see everything going to shit around them, they need to have money for if it gets worse, inadvertently making everything worse in the process.
The only way to pry it out of these assholes is to take it IE TAX it away. The government is guaranteed to spend it on something, and that something is almost certainly going to help somehow. How much we don't know, but anything is better than nothing.
It's a hard truth. Ronald Reagan famously quipped, when asked about his political party change, that "I didn't leave the Democratic party, the party left me." In their rush towards reactionary fascism over the past 4-5 years, the Republicans today have done the same to more than half their number.
That's pretty much it. I know many self-professed Republicans that are completely disgusted by their own party right now. Many of them are sick and tired of the moral majority bullshit that they're caught up in. The crusades against gay marriage. The crusades against repealing DADT and letting gays serve openly in the military. The crusades against abortion. The attempted shoehorning of Christianity into every corner of government...
Personally, I blame the Tea Party. Until Obama got elected and the Tea Party went apoplectic over the idea that their patron saint, Sarah Palin, didn't win the election, the Republican Party was a hell of a lot more reasonable. That's pretty much dead and buried, they're on a scorched-earth campaign, now. I see it with my own two eye every single day here in Wisconsin, where the Republican Party has been falling all over itself doing "whatever it takes" to prevent a recall of Scott Walker and the loss of control of our State Senate. They pass voter ID laws because of alleged "rampant fraud" they can't back up, then when the UW starts issuing free ID's to students so that they can vote, they howl in opposition about how they should be forced to go to the DMV to get an ID. Meanwhile they're cutting the hours of those DMV's left and right, ostensibly for "budgetary reasons", although boy, it sure does help make it even harder to get your ID so you can vote. Also, they legally can't charge you if you're getting an ID for voting purposes (it would be a poll tax and thus unconstitutional), so this is costing the state millions of dollars, so then they bitch that people shouldn't get free ID's anyway. Not only that, but in order to get the free ID, you have to check a box, and they mandated that DMV employees are not allowed to mention that the ID is free if it is for voting purposes. They're trying to force their newly redrawn district maps be used in future recalls, district maps that go so far as to literally displace democrats from the district they represent and thus force them to move, in effect disenfranchising whole swaths of these communities who would no longer get a say in recalling a representative they elected.
I know that the Democrats are guilty of playing their games, too, but I'm just so sick of all of it I could throw up. Time to call a mulligan on this entire government and start over with The United States of America 2.0.
There were some pretty anti-Semitic rants going on at those OWS camp out protests....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The problem with that is "Why but the cow if you're giving the milk away for free"? What incentive would Republican politicians have to deal fairly with tax increases once they've achieved a bunch of spending cuts? They'd just insist that even more cuts need to be made. I think Obama learned from the Health care debacle that trying to meet the Republicans half way, just leads to them demanding that he walk another half of the way, and then another half of the way, and so on.
Also the vast majority of "simplified" tax schemes are thinly veiled tax giveaways to the rich. A flat tax always hurts the people at the bottom end a lot more than it does the people at the top end. Because there a minimum costs to living a reasonable life and those costs decline as percentage of your income as your income rises, below the poverty line those costs may be in excess of 100% of your income.
Lastly, it's really not "worth it" to collect $2 for each of the American citizens who are living below the poverty line. First it costs a lot more than $2 to collect that money through income taxes, and second they probably pay sales taxes on legitimate purchases so it's highly unlikely that there are many people that actually pay no taxes at all.
Oh, and the basic American tax system would probably work just fine if all the deductions were stripped out. Of course, you'd need a constitutional amendment to prevent the addition of deductions back into the system or the day after you new shiny tax system was in place both Democrats and Republicans would be trying to add deductions for their various sponsors and causes.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Well, I'm down in the south. You know, where the Republican base is, with the "southern strategy" that you people haven't given up since Nixon came up with it.
I don't know what you're seeing in your neck of the woods. But I can go with what I've seen time and again, and I can go with what I've seen reported on time and again. And I can go by what I get from the local mailings, and robocalls, and emails from the local Republican party and "Tea Party" politicians.
Racism is strong down here. It's only gotten stronger since the election of Obama, and anyone who thinks that there isn't a very, very heavy segment of the Republican base right now who are opposing Obama primarily because they have a racial thing going on, well, they're not paying attention.
This isn't an isolated event. At the rallies down here, the "speakers" regularly get up and hurl invective at anyone who speaks a foreign language. They regularly insinuate that anyone of latino descent is "un-american", is "refusing to assimilate", or is connected to organized crime and drugs merely because of their skin color or racial makeup. There's a major problem with unequal treatment of people by race when it comes to the police, too - not in my state, but in a relevant news story, there's the race-based cop shakedowns of Tenaha, Texas. What most people don't realize is that in the American south, this kind of stuff is considered par for the course - a news story about it isn't "oh my god this is out of place", it's "these guys got a little too greedy and got caught." And then there are instances like this.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Tea Partiers, when they think there's a camera on them, insist that much of their platform is about "smaller government", or "law and order", or other high-minded principles. When you get them off camera, when you get them talking freely with a couple beers, then it's a different story. THEN, you find out that the "smaller government" means "too many people with dark skin living in poverty get food stamps or government assistance, how dare they come here, they should just go back to mexico" or that "law and order" means "I don't want those dark skinned spanish speaking people living in my neighborhood or sending a kid to the local schools, and if one of their kids asks my daughter for a date I'm getting out the shotgun." And the sad part is, all I have to do to hear them go on like this is show up at the local bar where they hold their "Tea Party meetup" events, keep my mouth shut and ears open, and drink a beer while they rant to each other.
That's because the public overwhelmingly does not want them to do so. This is known as "listening to your constituents."
The GOP have listened to Grover Norquist, who is ONE constituent.
It kind of falls in nicely with the 1% vs. the rest of us issue that is pretty clearly established as our biggest political issue of this era.
Clinton did. In fact, the math and the facts overwhelmingly demonstrate that Bush's tax cuts on the rich are the primary structural driver of our deficit. The other being the wars that Bush dragged us into for no reason.
This is also known as a lie. Social Security could be made solvent for another 75 years by simply raising the cap on taxes for those making more than 106k. Medicare can be made solvent by ending the ridiculous conditions imposed on it by Bush's part D abomination that the government cannot negotiate for lower drug prices.
. . . so you need to steal my Social Security benefits to pay off Bush's wars? To hell with that bullshit. I EARNED MY MOTHERFUCKING SOCIAL SECURITY. That money IS MINE. I am not giving it up so that some gold-plated CEO can have his second motherfucking yacht.
The shame is that the Republicans are listening to Grover Norquist and very obviously not hearing a single word the public has to say, which is, in a nutshell:
Democracy may be inconvenient to your ideology, but we are the majority and you are not. If you have a smidgeon of respect for it (which by your previous posts I can tell, you really don't) you will accept that an deal with it.
But, if like many Republicans you actually do NOT respect Democracy, the great thing is you are still going to just have to gag on that thing, and fucking deal with it. I do not care. Your movement and their ridiculous opinions do not matter anymore in US politics. The truth of this will become clear to you next year when we the 99% take your unearned power and rip it right the fuck out of your hands.
Better get used to that.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
By what yard stick? The latest Dem proposal was 1 trillion in tax increases, 1 trillion in cuts, and 300 billion in stimulus spending. And of the 1 trillion in cuts, only 200 billion are from mandatory spending. So 1 trillion new dollars from taxes plus 300 billion from stimulus == 1.3 trillion in demanded concessions from Republicans vs 200 billion in mandatory spending reductions. I'm not seeing the 3 to 1 ratio you're claiming, certainly not in relation to mandatory spending (which is what Republicans care most about -- they're looking for actual structural changes to the entitlement system, not a pittance of cuts). Even ignoring the "location of the cuts", it's still 1.3 trillion of revenue increase/additional spending vs 1 trillion in cuts. That's still nowhere near 3 to 1.