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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.)
Line their pockets with gaff and offer them the opportunity to screw over the public.
The committee was like having a deer convince a wolf not to eat him and the wolf trying to convince the deer that it should be eaten.
Take two polarizing political topics, put them in a room and you will get a stand still, especially when elections are just around the corner....
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Jesus really?
These aholes should just compromise. Raise taxes and cut spending. Do both. You can't agree? Well then why not fix the problem quickly by agreeing to these two points that would solve the problem in a hurry? Sure, I am not an economist, but I bet my understanding of solving the debt problem is just about as good as a senator or congressman who spends his time raising money all day, rather than trying to figure out this country's problems.
(yes I could be very wrong, and i look forward to more intelligent replies below, but at least i have proposed a solution right there! much better than 90% of our leaders....)
Completely taking tax increases off the table is stupid and shortsighted.
Understand that most of what they are talking about is reductions in spending INCREASES, not cuts, ala Military. In the current lingo: You spend $100 in 2011, you planned to spend $125 in 2012. If you only spend $100 in 2012, it's called a 25% cut in the military... In most cases (by default), government spending goes up by 8% per year. If it only increase 4%, every screams "cut my program by 4%". Again, all of this rests on the ASSUMPTION that we have a budget, which we do not. The United States has not passed a budget in about 3 years...
The reason they're not getting anywhere with spending cuts is the game has been rigged in favor of spending increases in the first place.
They have generous rates of increase built into the budgeting process. All of the so-called "cuts" are actually (slight) decreases to the rate of increase.
They could plug up the deficit merely by having slightly greater increase rate decreases.
Anyways, they can cut now, or they can have the universe cut for them. There's a limit to how much you can just keep spending pretend money.
A related rant is how Congress has gotten around the 27th amendment. That was supposed to say there should be an election in between Congressional pay raises. But they came up with a process whereby they get automatic cost of living increases without voting on it. Flagrantly unconstitutional. It's the same sort of thing.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I say we all get together and agree to not re-elect a single member of Congress. We could clear the entire House next year and a decent chunk of the Senate. I don't care if the new members are democrats, republicans, blue, green, red, or purple, it just seems like the entrenched politics is completely broken.
It's too bad we can't figure out a way to just throw them into jail.
----- obSig
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?
The Democrats appear to have located their spines.
The game that's been going on for over a year is simple:
1. Make demands in exchange for continuing to have a functioning government after some deadline.
2. "negotiate" with the Democrats until several hours before the deadline.
3. Democrats blink, make an 11th-hour deal with Republicans to give them about 95% of their original demands.
4. Democrats declare victory and tell their constituents that the 5% that they got is worth it. Their constituents, apparently not as stupid as the Democratic politicians, don't believe them.
5. Republicans declare victory, and tell their constituents that the 5% cost was worth it, because they'll get rid of it soon enough. They then locate the next deadline they can use.
I am officially gone from
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
The problem is: there *are* no cuts. The so-called cuts are reductions in planned increases. Government spending continues to go up - just less than it otherwise might have. This is not success.
Anyway, the amount they were supposed to cut was a joke. They were supposed to trim 1.2 trillion over 10 years. That's 120 billion per year. But again - not off the current spending, but off of planned increases. The result would still have been a net increase.
Idiots re-arranging the deck furniture on the Titanic. It would be entertaining if it weren't so frustrating.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I surprised everyone is fooled by this. The solution to the problem at hand is obvious... Cuts in both military spending as well as social programs, and ending the Bush tax cuts... in fact, we probably need even more than that. But how can the republicans raise taxes and cut military spending and then go home and get re-elected? How can democrats cut social spending and not invent some new "screw the rich" tax? It would require a diabolical plan... pass a law that says if a special committee cant agree on a plan, all these things happen... Then find people to be on the committee that are all as far left and right as possible so that, not only will they not agree, but their respective electorate will praise them for not making a deal with those evil republicans/democrats. Taxes go up, spending goes down, everyone can blame everyone else... It's perfect! The only problem? Even this wasn't enough. We're still doomed.
Says who? Every time we get into one of these debt crises, people say we have to cut spending and raise taxes. And in the end, the taxes get raised, but the spending never actually gets cut, and so the Government just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It's gotta stop somewhere. That's why I say no tax increases until we've really cut spending. Like not a small decrease in the rate of future increases, more like 10% actual cuts across the board, including both entitlement programs and the military.
I don't reply to ACs
Completely taking tax increases off the table is stupid and shortsighted.
I'm not sure if you can lay it all on Norquist, but he's clearly the most powerful proponent of the stupidest, most obstructive Republicans in the budget mess. Norquist, the 96.5% of the Republicans in congress (238 of 242 House, 41 of 47 Senate) who signed his pledge, and every single Republican candidate won't do anything that raises taxes by a single dollar.
And check out this:
In a debate in August, Republican presidential candidates were asked whether they would support a budget deal that bundled $10 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. All said no. They rejected any deal that involved raising taxes.
So they hate raising taxes. We get it. These assholes still can't accept a proposal that goes in their favor 11 to 1? They reject it out of hand before even talking about what the spending cuts would be? Are they joking?!??!?
Who the fuck supports a platform, for a major party in a democratic republic, that says: "We get every single thing we want and you get nothing you want. If you don't comply, we'll watch it all burn until you give it."
That's not debate. That's not governing. It's fucking economic terrorism; it's taking hostage of 295 million people to satisfy your ideological hard-on.
...seriously people?
F*** what I wouldn't give for the Clinton years again. Smart president, likes a little scandal, smart Republican congress, keeping each other in balance with COMPROMISE and working together. Ignoring that whole ridiculous impeachment thing (personally, I'm happier when the President is known to be getting some.)
Now? Well meaning, if weak (first term-itis), President, diametrically opposed Republican Congress who are caught between a rock and a hard place trying to embrace the Tea Party while ignoring its ridiculous 'no compromise' policies.
I remember when I first heard about the tea-party, it sounded good. People wanting common sense and a return to 'founding father' kinds of ways. Then it became popular and got hijacked by the whack jobs. The founding fathers espoused compromise and working together - the tea party? Hell no, "My way or the highway" is more their tune.
Government meant to operate in balance cannot operate when one part of the government simply will not work with the others.
Do I want my taxes to go up? F*** no. Should they go up to solve debt problems in addition to cutting spending? Of course. Make corporations making over 10 million dollars actually pay taxes? What a crazy idea...
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Thank You America for letting us in Europe feel that we are not alone in being governed by a bunch of self-serving idiots
Oh but they did agree to something, they agreed to go into the discussion AFTER signing the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge": http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/21/grover-norquist-tax-lobbyist-supercommittee-gop
They really set themselves up for success on that one.
"I know, lets go into a discussion about the US finances, but before we do, let's remove some of the most powerful tools in our toolbox completely"
I'm a european working for an American company, and have always been impressed with how American companies do business, their aggressive plans and the "everything is up for grabs" mentality. Lately however, I've been equally unimpressed by the opposite, here we are, facing a massive problem, and the American politicians are behaving like babies.
The response? Smoke weed on wall-street!
And why do you think it needs to be a bigger part of your life ?
This is what you are asking for when you demand taxes be raised. Sure you may just want to soak the rich guy, I mean its hardly fair he has more than you do. What you really get is that money going to more bureaucracy that much more overhead in your daily life, and that much more of a boost to politicians patronage powers. That means that much less "Democracy" and that much more oligarchy in a country that has far too much of the later.
And in the end, the taxes get raised, but the spending never actually gets cut, and so the Government just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
Actually spending went down during the Clinton years as percentage of GDP, which is the metric that matters. The last time before that when spending went down was during the Kennedy/Johnson administration.
You should note that there is no a priori "right" level of expenditures. You can choose to create a Haiti still level of government services in which case 10% of GDP in government expenditures would be too high, or you can create a cradle-to-grave, free education, free health care, safe streets, government backed pensions, system like in Sweden, and if you can provide that for 30% of GDP you are getting the deal of the century.
So rather than asking for more or less government spending, how about asking for efficient government programs for a change?
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
I don't mind paying for the elderly, but the program needs to be cut off at its knees now because it is the height of injustice to expect us and Generation X to fund such a horribly mismanaged program now that the Boomers want to retire. They had 1994-2008 to right the ship of state, to try to rebuild the trust fund (which was destroyed on their parents' watch) and ran one of the most irresponsible periods of American government in our history.
To reach that conclusion, you have to have missed a lot of important information:
1. In the late 1980's, the federal government, acting on the advice of Alan Greenspan and others, increased payroll taxes specifically to build up a giant pile of cash for the Boomers to retire on.
2. The Social Security Administration took that pile of cash and invested it in US Treasury bonds, as required by law. They invest in US Treasuries primarily to prevent the risk of corruption and to reduce the risk that the pile of cash will disappear.
3. Congress took that same cash that was invested in US Treasuries, started treating that as income, and spent it, effectively kicking the can down the road.
4. If the general US budget pays off the US Treasuries held by the Social Security Administration, then Social Security will be fine for at least another 40 years.
The only reason Social Security is declared to be in some sort of crisis mode is because it's demanding that the loans they made to the rest of the government be paid back.
The equivalent of this in the private sector would be raiding the pension fund, and then telling people who go to collect on their pensions "Sorry, the money is gone".
I am officially gone from
Did you not pay attention to the 2010 elections? Many were kicked out because they wanted something new. Now we have even WORSE people in office. Change for the sake of change rarely works. Quit saying this. Vote for people that back your views, or at the very least vote for the least evil if that doesn't exist.
It was a power envisioned by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, even though it wasn't explicitly spelled out. The point of ruling a law "unconstitutional" really is one of recognition: If the court system refuses to acknowledge the validity of a law and therefore doesn't even recognize that the law has been created through a constitutional process, that law really doesn't exist as far as the court system is concerned. Yes, it may appear on the books of statutory law, but effectively a single citation to a higher court judicial opinion (not even the supreme court) invalidating that law renders ineffective any prosecution under that law.
That was the whole point of Marbury v. Madison, so far as in that case even the filing of the case before the Supreme Court was unconstitutionally done and therefore it was unconstitutional for such a petition to have been granted in the first place. This was also a constitutional crises so far as the only legal means to enforce a law was to perform an act that in itself was contrary to the U.S. Constitution. The law under question in that case, the Judiciary Act of 1789, had several provisions that simply were ill advised to even be put into legislation and most significant was an unconstitutional expansion of the U.S. Supreme Court itself and its authority. To have ruled in favor of Marbury would have essentially forced the court to ignore the U.S. Constitution altogether and to have considered statutory law alone on the presumption that it was the domain exclusively of the U.S. Congress to determine the scope of the Constitution. In that sense, I think it was a very wise move for the court to have taken at the time, even if this decision might be abused in other contexts.
The Democrats keep offering more and more cuts but get nothing back from the Republicans.
We need both revenue increases and spending cuts.
The Republicans, and the Tea Party radicals specifically, are the problem.
Blar.
During war time? It's fine to ask middle and lower class people to sacrifice their lives, but raising taxes on the rich is out of the question?
that one side was willing to compromise. One side wants to cut entitlements, the other to raise taxes. Republicans say: the Democrats wouldn't compromise and do it all by cutting entitlements. The Democrats say: the Republicans wouldn't compromise and do it with a mix of taxes and entitlement cuts.
One side just sounds saner here. It's depressing.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Except this is what the Republicans are actually saying:
Republicans: We need to increase spending on the military and cut everything else and we need to cut taxes on the rich.
The Republicans are actually preparing a bill which will cancel the automatic military cuts, and they were willing to raise taxes on the middle class in exchange for tax cuts for the rich. They seem to have little real interest in balancing the budget.
Why doesn't anyone recongnize that if you took every penny from the top 1% we'd still be completely screwed because we spend way too much .
Because that's not actually true. The richest Americans have about $1 trillion in cash reserves and American corporations have about $1.5 trillion in cash reserves. That's money that's not doing anything other than earning interest. There's an interesting argument to be made that that money is being kept out of the economy because taxes on the rich and corporations are actually too low.
Wealth is being concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest Americans. The top 400 have about as much wealth as the bottom 50%. This means that the rewards of society are overwhelming going to the richest Americans, which probably means they aren't paying as much as they should in taxes. After all you'd expect the people profiting from the status quo to pay to maintain it, right?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Just read the two statements in the summary. Nothing else is necessary.
Republican: "Our Democratic friends were never able to do the entitlement reforms. They weren't going to do anything without raising taxes."
Democrat: "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."
I mean, one of those is clearly a bald-faced misrepresentation: this is made clear within the statement itself. In the first sentence he flatly claims that Democrats would not "do the entitlement reforms". In the very next sentence he makes it clear that this is simply a lie: Democrats were entirely ready to do entitlement reforms, but on the condition that they were accompanied by tax increases. You know, compromise. That thing two sides who don't agree are supposed to do for the greater good.
The Democrat, by contrast, simply states that the Republicans would not agree to anything that included tax rises - whatever entitlement cuts were involved.
I just don't see where's the room for interpretation or greyness there. From their own statements it's quite clear that the Republicans are a) fundamentally dishonest and b) utterly unwilling to compromise.
the founders envisioned a LIMITED central government who's role was kept at a minimum. Defending the country, ensuring peace and unimpeded economic traffic between the states (the infamous "commerce clause") and providing for jurisprudence over country-wide legal issues. that was it.
What you're forgetting is the WHY. They envisioned keeping things "local" where possible; more to the point, they wanted things kept to their definition of "local" in what could easily done in a week's travel. None of the original 13 colonies took more than a week to ride on horse from one end to the other, and some took significantly less.
Fast-forward to today. You can hop on a jet, and cross the country in hours. You can road-trip it in less than a week. Riding hard and trading driving shifts, you can road-trip New York to Los Angeles on the freeways in 1 day 21 hours (so assume maybe 2 and a half days to add in gas stops, pit stops, and food breaks). Communication speeds are even faster; you can get real-time communication with an amazing amount of the world over phone or internet at any time, infrastructure-wise.
The reason for the clauses of the constitution concerning interstate commerce and interstate relations grew, not because the government power was growing, but because the nation - communication and travel wise - simply "became smaller." The founding fathers would have taken an area like Texas and forcibly broken it up into multiple states, because they would never have seen it as viable to have one big "Texas State" with that much land mass - but even between 1776 and 1845, communication and travel technologies had made it viable to allow Texas to enter as a state without being broken up.
They also never considered what the march of the industrial revolution would do. Sure, they never considered the idea of something like the EPA - but they were DUMPING THEIR SHIT OUT THE WINDOW INTO THE STREETS; Thomas Crapper's company didn't start mass producing flush toilets until the 1880s. They never considered the need for something like the EPA and environmental regulations, because they never considered the idea of a factory dumping so much toxic waste into a river or down into the groundwater reservoir that the water became beyond-undrinkable and beyond-unlivable.
I could go on, but I hope the point is clear. The founding fathers envisioned "limited government" based on scale of communications. As time has marched forward, communications and travel technology have changed, industrial technology has changed, and the sheer mobility of humanity has changed, the federal government has had to take a more active role simply because the states are, by virtue of being "so close together" and interacting so frequently, in conflict more and more and more and more.
You don't believe me? Think about this: what happens if we leave environmental regulations to the states? Chances are, Illinois or Minnesota passes something really fucking lax, and the next thing you know Missouri and Louisiana are up in arms because the Mississippi and their drinking and irrigation water is being fouled.
While I can appreciate your position, your assumption that the founders set up the Republic to have limited government because of communications restrictions is specious at best.
I can prove it to you by simple extending your argument to the planet as a whole.
It used to take over a YEAR to travel around the globe. now one merely needs to hop on a plane, and with a few changes and layovers, you can circumnavigate the globe in a few days. if you have enough money, you can hitch a ride on a Russian rocket and circle the globe at several thousand miles an hour in LEO if you want.
Communications across the planet are now as instantaneous as talking across the room. I regularly have online discussions with complete strangers that I will probable never meet from foreign lands that I have never visited. Something the Founders could not have imagined even in their wildest dreams.
And yet, I hear no rational calls for One World Government. If the speed of communications and travel is the ONLY reason for a limited American government, why not extend that to the entire world? It's not as though the various countries of the world aren't in constant conflict with one another. Why not a large, strong central government to rule the whole world?
Of course, we already tried that. It was called Fascism, and then Communism. (Brother ideologies, really.) and both have been roundly defeated and are rightly now ridiculed as monstrous and evil.
Then of course, there are the actual writings of the Founders, who frequently stated their desire for a LIMITED government. Not because of communications, but because it was wise.
Behold their words:
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." - Patrick Henry
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare⦠The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America." - Alexander Hamilton
"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.
It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.
There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
You spend a lot of time on Jefferson and Madison; the quote from Franklin really is inappropriate in its entirety given that it was written long before the Constitution, as part of a letter to delegates advocating secession, and tarring British loyalists as "giving up liberty" for the "security" of the British empire. Jefferson was off in France and had absolutely shit-all to do with the writing of the Constitution. Madison, meanwhile, is MUCH more in favor of centralized government than you give him credit for; the bulk of his writings (which come from the Federalist, not the ANTI-Federalist) are a defense of vesting power in a centralized, federal government and not a call to strip the federal government of power and simply re-create the old Articles of Confederacy.
But, since you've proven only an ability to pull quotations out of context and absolutely zero understanding of the process in which the Constitution let me clue you in: the basics of it, including the separation of powers, were the production of the Virginia delegation led by Edmund Randolph. The bicameral legislature was pulled from British tradition, while the idea of power-against-power as checks and balances came heavily from the philosophical writings of John Locke. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were heavy proponents of "proportional only" representation in both houses, and were ruled down by the smaller states before the compromise of the Senate/House division. William Paterson, a STRONG federalist, proposed the competing unicameral "two representatives per state" option that eventually became the Senate. Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the preamble, was also a strong federalist who had roundly decried the antisocial behavior of the states towards each other under the Articles - he had previously been a congressional representative during the Articles, but was defeated for reelection when anti-federalism became popular in New York.
When you want to look over the creation of the Constitution, you need to look at the writings of those who were actually there. You've misquoted James Madison, you've barely done justice to Ben Franklin (who was almost a freaking anarchist, as evidenced by his speech from the final day of the convention), and your other "founding fathers" weren't even participants in its creation.
In short: it is you, sir, who is uneducated, ill-informed, and completely wrong about the Constitution.