This Whole Debt Limit Thing

[Drysdale]

OK, see it now. So the Dems had a 31 seat advantage in 2006 and in the Senate 6 seat advantage.

Why is it still all the GOP's fault through 2008 per the OP?

 

[daredelvis]

OK, see it now. So the Dems had a 31 seat advantage in 2006 and in the Senate 6 seat advantage.

One seat advantage in the senate.

Why is it still all the GOP's fault through 2008 per the OP?

Pretty articulated defined by others: surplus into deficit, unfettered spending starting on day one of the Bush administration, cutting taxes rather than putting the fiscal house in order, unfunded wars with Enron style accounting. That last bit never seems to make it into the discussion.

The answer to every question for Republicans (ironically one has to add "since Reagan") is "cut taxes!"... surplus, "cut taxes!", booming economy, "cut taxes!", recession "cut taxes!", nation at war "cut taxes!", nation at second war "cut taxes!", nation facing downturn of great depression magnitude "cut taxes!", looming debt crisis, "cut taxes!". When do the Republicans think that we, as a nation, need to start paying for excess of the last 8 years (no matter who's fault it is)?

Daredelvis

 

[lomiller]

OK, see it now. So the Dems had a 31 seat advantage in 2006 and in the Senate 6 seat advantage.

Why is it still all the GOP's fault through 2008 per the OP?

Go through the issues one by one.

1) Tax cuts – already passed by 2006 and would need a new bill to retract. Such a bill would need 60 votes in the senate to pass, which is more seats than the Democrats held. Furthermore it would need to overcome a Presidential veto for which there wasn’t enough Democrats in either the house or senate.
2) Medicare part D – Entitlement, which means it’s not renewed every year and would require a new bill to retract or pay for, again there were not enough Democrat votes to do this.
3) Military spending – unlike other discretionary spending, military spending runs on multi-year appropriations so again it would take several years to make any changes.
4) Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – already in progress and would take time to exit gracefully.
5) Subprime mortgage crisis – It falls to the administration to deal with this or tell congress it lacks the tools to deal with it.
6) Lehman Brothers and subsequent collapse – The treasury and Fed had the powers to prevent the Lehman bankruptcy but they failed to do so on ideological grounds. It may be that the situation had progressed too far and there would have just been another trigger later on but we will never know now.
7) Budget – the president still drafts the budget proposal meaning the Republicans still had by far the strongest say. That said, less then 15% of the budget is actually falls into the non-mandatory non-military category that goes before congress every year.
For the things congress could actually do, the Democrats would have liked to pay for Medicare part D with increased premiums which Republicans could have and would have blocked. Reverse the tax cuts which again could and would have been blocked. Cut military spending and exit Iraq – which Republicans did block.

 

[NoahFence]

Since the day he was innaugurated, I've said Republicans will not support Obama on anything, just to spite him and Democrats. I've yet to be proven wrong.

 

[Neally]

Since the day he was innaugurated, I've said Republicans will not support Obama on anything, just to spite him and Democrats. I've yet to be proven wrong.

I can't recall a majority GOP group not supporting Obama's decision to kill Bin Laden.

 

[johnny karate]

I can't recall a majority GOP group not supporting Obama's decision to kill Bin Laden.

Yeah, they just decided to give the credit to Bush.

 

[Neally]

Yeah, they just decided to give the credit to Bush.

No. Some may have asserted that the foundations for gathering the intel may be attributed to Bush, but the actual go ahead to make the hit was of course Obama's decision and that decision was widely supported by the GOP. You and NoahFence are wrong.

 

[Upchurch]

No. Some may have asserted that the foundations for gathering the intel may be attributed to Bush, but the actual go ahead to make the hit was of course Obama's decision and that decision was widely supported by the GOP. You and NoahFence are wrong.

Right. And I didn't see this plastered all over Facebook either:

Let's be clear on this: OBAMA did NOT kill Bin Laden. An American soldier, who Obama just a few weeks ago was debating on whether or not to PAY, did. Obama just happened to be the one in office when our soldiers finally found OBL and took him out. This is NOT an Obama victory, but an AMERICAN… victory!! REPOST IF YOU AGREE!!!

eta: apparently, that meme got around.

 

[mhaze]

Since the day he was innaugurated, I've said Republicans will not support Obama on anything, just to spite him and Democrats. I've yet to be proven wrong.

Because they all read, and they understood you, and they ignored, and they moved on.

 

[BeAChooser]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opini...sidential-flummery-and-questions-left-unasked

Presidential flummery and questions left unasked

By: Hugh Hewitt … snip; … 7/17/11

Bravo, Jake Tapper.

Finally from a member of the increasingly supine White House press corps came a question that demanded of the president specificity as to his alleged willingness to "upset his base."

Tapper asked the president on Friday to "tell us one structural reform that you are willing to make to one of these entitlement programs that would have a major impact on the deficit?"

The president spoke a long time in response but provided no such specificity about even one such reform, revealing again that the would-be Emperor of the Big Deal has no plan beyond a political operation to assign blame for any unpleasant consequences of a collision with the existing debt ceiling.

… snip …

The president avoids specifics because the numbers in his world don't add up in everyone else's universe. It is all a giant head fake, a show for the adoring scribblers and broadcasters, something to write about other than the awful reality of a hemorrhaging federal budget.

 

[BenBurch]

No. Some may have asserted that the foundations for gathering the intel may be attributed to Bush, but the actual go ahead to make the hit was of course Obama's decision and that decision was widely supported by the GOP. You and NoahFence are wrong.

LOL!

The ONLY reason they didn't try harder to spin that one is that they wouldn't have gotten away with it. Not for lack of wanting to.

 

[Neally]

Right. And I didn't see this plastered all over Facebook either:

I said major GOP groups, meaning the mainstream party and conservative commentaries. That doesn't include the FB nutters that you follow. Regardless, the post doesn't contradict my statement that Obama made the hit decision and that it was widely supported by both sides.

LOL!

The ONLY reason they didn't try harder to spin that one is that they wouldn't have gotten away with it. Not for lack of wanting to.

Both sides try to put a negative spin against the opposition when and where they can. We see it in this very thread, "Bush caused this whole debt crisis!", but that doesn't contradict my statement that Obama made the hit decision and that it was widely supported by both sides.

 

[Puppycow]

It seems that public opinion is starting to move against the republicans on this issue.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20080492-503544.html

Americans are now roughly split on raising the debt ceiling, a new CBS News poll shows, with support for an increase nearly doubling since last month.

The poll found that the more one follows the debt ceiling debate, the more likely he or she is to support an increase: 51 percent of those who are following the debate very closely think the debt ceiling should be raised, compared to just 29 percent of those who are not following it closely.

I would imagine that people who are following this issue closely are more likely to vote too, as interest in this issue suggests interest in politics in general.

Two thirds of Americans back the Obama administration position that a deal to increase the debt ceiling should include both spending cuts and tax increases, while just 28 percent back the Republican position of only spending cuts. Three in four say an agreement they do not fully support would be preferable to having the U.S. default on its debts.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20080250-503544.html

Americans are unimpressed with their political leaders' handling of the debt ceiling crisis, with a new CBS News poll showing a majority disapprove of all the involved parties' conduct, but Republicans in Congress fare the worst, with just 21 percent backing their resistance to raising taxes.

 

[Upchurch]

Warren Buffett: Do away with the debt ceiling

The debt limit has “change[d] almost 100 times over the years” and “I think seven times in the Bush administration,” Buffett said.

“The way to limit debt is by taking in revenues that are appropriate in relation to your expenditures,” he said. “And to have the artificial limit which gets raised in the end disrupt the activities in an important way of Congress periodically, I think it’s a waste of Congress’ time.”

 

[BenBurch]

Warren Buffett: Do away with the debt ceiling

He's obviously a socialist!

Oh.

Wait...

 

[DeathDart]

Since the day he was innaugurated, I've said Republicans will not support Obama on anything, just to spite him and Democrats. I've yet to be proven wrong.

I agree with Psycho Kitty. And so it came to pass, that the last sign of the apocalypse....

 

[leftysergeant]

No. Some may have asserted that the foundations for gathering the intel may be attributed to Bush...

And that would be wrong, because the Shrub and his torture monkeys dekayed the gathering of any reliable intel. The boy was just palying games with people's lives to make himself look like a "war president."

...but the actual go ahead to make the hit was of course Obama's decision and that decision was widely supported by the GOP.

Obama is a real man (just a little too willing to compromise with sociopaths to get SOMETHING done) and does not need a Lex Luthor to make himself look like Superman. The GOP jumped on board to congratulate him so that they didn't have to look like he had spoiled their fun. They couldn't admit that something bad for the image of their retarded hero was good for America, so they had to make it look like Obama had just done what the Shrub had tried to do.

It would have been better for the GOP had Obama failed at that, too, but that is good for America.

If the GOP is not going to actually govern for the common good, they need to fail.

 

[Hans]

D'oh--I misvoted in the poll. I was aiming for Congressional Repubs and clicked on Obama by mistake.

Dang I did the same thing too----is there evil behind this? LOL

 

[icerat]

So, latest is news is that some bipartisan "gang of six" has come up with "a plan" that Obama is endorsing.

Sometimes I just don't get american politics -

At the Capitol, the bipartisan group led by Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia pitched its plan for an immediate $500 billion in spending cuts followed by a longer-term effort to force bigger reductions and $1 trillion in tax increases. The plan would lower tax rates and limit the growth of entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

So they're going to lower tax rates and get a trillion more in increased tax ....

color me skeptical.

 

[leftysergeant]

I like the idea of just not raising it. Then we've got a balanced budget, without much if any discussion and without all this horseplay.

Addicts call this "cold turkey".

Washington could use a bit of that.

That kind of parallels the rubbish that the fat deaf eunuch has been throwing around on his radio program.

It will cost us more in interest later. You are not very well-informed on these things.