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Republicans are once again threatening to shut down the government over the debt ceiling. A move which could lead to another credit downgrade for the US.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Wow. So here we are again.

Washington is spoiling for a fight over the country’s debt ceiling — less than a year after a showdown that induced a credit downgrade, rocked the markets and eroded confidence in Congress.

Last week, House Speaker John Boehner said he would not permit another increase in the country’s legal borrowing limit without a larger amount of spending cuts and reforms approved in tandem.

“I suspect blood pressure readings went up [that] afternoon,” said budget expert Joe Minarik, senior vice president of the Committee for Economic Development.

That would be understandable given how damaging the last debt ceiling showdown turned out to be.

read more

Here we go again: Boehner says any increase in the debt limit must come with a greater amount of spending cuts.

Speaker John Boehner is once again promising that any increase in the nation’s borrowing limit will have to be accompanied by a greater amount of spending cuts.

The Ohio Republican’s position, which will be announced at the Peter G. Peterson Fiscal Summit Tuesday in D.C., seems to mirror his stance during last year’s all-consuming debt ceiling standoff.

“When the time comes, I will again insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase,” Boehner plans to say, according to excerpts released by his office. “This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance. If that means we have to do a series of stop-gap measures, so be it – but that’s not the ideal. Let’s start solving the problem. We can make the bold cuts and reforms necessary to meet this principle, and we must.”

read more

Didn’t we JUST go through this, what, six months ago? Only to have the republicans turn around and back out of their side of the deal.

House Republican Leaders Plan To Renege On Debt Ceiling Deal

Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) signaled during an interview with Fox Business that he was open to reneging on the budget deal the GOP crafted with Democrats last year during the debacle over raising the nation’s debt ceiling. Though the parties agreed in that deal on a spending level for the 2013 budget, Boehner is being pushed by the more conservative members of his party to cut even deeper.

And according to Reuters, that pressure has paid off, as both Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-OH) are ready to cut below the level specified in the debt ceiling deal:

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are ready to break a hard-fought budget deal with Democrats as they try to quell a revolt by conservatives who are insisting on deeper spending cuts ahead of the November elections.

House Republican aides said on Tuesday that House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were pressing for a modest $19 billion reduction of discretionary spending caps in this year’s Republican budget plan.

“I’m really disappointed that they’re considering a budget – violating the budget agreementthat is now the law of this country. This was designed to avoid another government shutdown or a threat of a shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). “We had a deal last August on the budget numbers, and we expect them to live with that deal,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) has said. The end result of this standoff could be yet another impending government shutdown, as the government’s current spending authority expires on September 30.

source

From the horse’s mouth, dear followers

happyfeminist:

To all those people who thought it was unfair to say the Republican Party was taking the American people hostage by creating the politically manufactured debt ceiling crisis, Sen. Mitch McConnell has a message for you:

You’re wrong.

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.”

So there it is, straight from McConnell’s mouth. The senator was perfectly willing to threaten to destroy the American economy unless he got what he wanted.

What’s also relevant here is that he’s basically saying that the tea party was perfectly willing to kill the hostage, i.e., your jobs, your 401k, your entire economic future.

[Source]

Translation: Yeah, I’d fuck America over to help the rich stay rich.

Thank you!

(via happyfeminist-deactivated201208)

Ryan’s Dirty Trailer: Seven Billion In Cuts Proposed to Defense Spending, Republicans Lose Their Shit

blogvader:

Looks like the Republicans are still sour that they weren’t the ones to nab Osama Bin Laden, because they’re grasping at the flimsiest of straws to attack Democrats on national security these days. (That or their corporate overlords are paying them overtime to say the dumbest things.)

The latest: Calling seven billion in potential defense cuts “Armageddon” or “a national security crisis”.

As much as I love Mother Jones it infuriates me that I don’t see major networks calling bullshit on the idiotic statements that senators and Pentagon officials make over necessary defense spending cuts that probably won’t even materialize anyway. Cutting a paltry seven billion dollars from a trillion dollar budget is hardly “the knowing destruction of the US military”, as the distinguished blowhard Jon Kyl hyperbolized. I will give Defense Secretary Panetta a little credit for stating the obvious: “We must come to realize that not every defense program is necessary, not every defense dollar is sacred or well-spent, and more of everything is simply not sustainable”.


Per Mother Jones:

In theory, the debt deal will cut discretionary security spending by $7 billion over the next two years. How would those cuts impact the Pentagon? The Pentagon’s base operating budget typically runs between $500 and 600 billion a year. $7 billion is roughly the cost of 3 submarines, or 20 fighter jets, or one-fifth of one KBR contract in Iraq. In other words, chump change. And that’s if the cuts actually come from the DOD. According to the text of the debt bill (PDF), it’s up to Congress to decide what parts of the total security and defense budget—which includes the Veterans Administration, Homeland Security, international affairs, and nuclear weapons—actually take a hit. One thing that won’t take a hit is the funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is specifically preserved in the bill.

The White House and Congressional leaders insist that the debt compromise will slash $350 billion from the Pentagon over the next 10 years. Additionally, if Congress doesn’t cut another $1.2 trillion across the board by December, a “trigger” in the bill is supposed to kick in, reducing the defense budget by another $500 to 600 billion.

But those hard numbers aren’t spelled out in the bill. “The actual amount will be decided by Congress in the future,” Wheeler says. And there’s no guarantee that Congress, particularly Rep. McKeon and his pork-loving Armed Services Committee members, will take any cuts out of the Pentagon’s hide. The bill “is classic Washington Kabuki theater,” Gordon Adams, a political science professor who worked as a security budget expert for the Clinton White House, tells Foreign Policy. “The whole deal is designed to be opaque about the things you really want to know, such as how much defense will be cut.”

We’ve been ‘thrown under the bus’

“Today we, and everyone we have worked to speak for and fight for, were thrown under the bus,” Rep. Raul Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who is co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Sunday as top senators began to describe the deal they are trying to strike with Mr. Obama.

[FULL STORY]

The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

The Centrist Cop-Out

By PAUL KRUGMAN - The New York Times

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

[FULL STORY]

It’s like watching a bear lumber out of it’s cave to eat an uppity bobcat.

Oh shit!

This is the second time I’ve posted one of your replies today, but this one is just too damn good to get buried.

John McCain erupts: Conservatives are lying to America

By Greg Sargent

So the debt limit debate has come to this: John McCain, who you may recall was the GOP’s 2008 standard bearer, is now openly accusing conservatives of actively misleading America with their completely unrealistic demands, which he labeled “deceiving” and “bizarro.”

In a seminal moment in this debate, here’s some video of McCain on the Senate floor today, unleashing an angry tirade at conservatives who are still holding out for a balanced budget amendment as part of any compromise on the debt ceiling. McCain accused them of “deceiving” America into believing such a thing can pass the Senate…

Full story and video here.

The crap the GOP is pulling right now is unpatriotic, and downright dangerous.

News from around the web this morning:

From thehill.com

There is now an economically unpatriotic wing of the GOP. They express partisan joy with every new job loss. They oppose new jobs programs with an obstructionism reminiscent of segregationist senators during the dark days of the antebellum South. Their politics is a cult of unpatriotism in which some Americans die for their country while the wealthiest Americans are not asked to pay taxes equal to those of their receptionist, and the wealthiest companies are not asked to pay any taxes at all.

Salon.com

House Republicans are passing around a brilliant Erick Erickson post arguing that they should blow up the entire U.S. economy because Obama will get the blame.

politicususa.com

If our current crop of Republicans had been at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, we would have no Constitution today, and that’s a point they seem not to understand. It took a lot of give and take – not one individual or group dictating to another – to forge that all-important government.

politicususa.com (again)

According to the Republican Party, America is broke. We can’t afford so-called entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security. We can’t afford support for programs such as Head Start, or workers’ collective bargaining rights. We can’t afford healthcare reform or support for then National Institute of Health which funds cancer and Parkinson’s research, or the National Weather Service which protects us from a volatile environment. But we can somehow afford endless war.

Everyone involved in this bullshit needs to lose their seat in the next election, I am having a hard time understanding why there are even people out there who still support these clowns when it seems like the only thing they have in mind is making the president “look bad” and are not doing the job they were elected to do.

Frankly if my representative (as in the one I actually voted for) was up in Washington acting like this I’d be livid, this is bad for their constituents, and bad for our country, it’s time for them to put aside their partisan bullshit and do what’s right for the American people. 

Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display [by the GOP] either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.

Getting to Crazy By PAUL KRUGMAN  

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.

Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.

And may I say to those suddenly agonizing over the mental health of one of our two major parties: People like you bear some responsibility for that party’s current state.

Let’s talk for a minute about what Republican leaders are rejecting.

President Obama has made it clear that he’s willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As The Times’s Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

Yet Republicans are saying no… [FULL STORY]

And yet, people will continue to vote for these asshats based on “social issues” and the fact that they are supposedly “good god fearing Americans”.

You have been duped public… palm meet face.

Barack Obama: Would Ronald Reagan be sitting here? I’ve reached my limit. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this.

Now THIS is the man I voted for!!!

(Source: twitter.com)

GOP Wants Elections, Could Care Less About Country

liberalsarecool:

For all of his many flaws, Mitch McConnell’s candor is occasionally refreshing.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that his fall-back plan for the debt ceiling negotiations would prevent President Obama from blaming Republicans for the economic fallout from a default.

“If we go into default, [the president] will say that Republicans are making the economy worse … The president will have the bully pulpit to blame the Republicans for all of this destruction,” McConnell said, indicating that default would hand the re-election to Obama.

“I refuse to help Barack Obama get re-elected by marching Republicans into a position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy,” McConnell said.

A more thoughtful argument might have referenced the senator’s desire to do right by the country. Maybe something about the public suffering in the event of a self-imposed economic crash.

But that’s not where the Minority Leader is going with this. Avoiding an economic catastrophe? Whatever. What really matters here is McConnell avoiding blame and electoral consequences for the misguided hostage strategy he and his party never really thought through.

They’re so brazen that they don’t even give a fuck anymore. It’s sad, and even sadder that people will continue to vote for them.

(Source: washingtonmonthly.com, via liberalsarecool)

Republican FAIL

liberalsarecool:

What the what?

Talk about absconding responsibility.  The GOP does not want to make tough choices, so they kick all the power to the Executive Branch.  The same branch they say is a socialist/Marxist/Kenyan and wants-to-destroy our country/economy. 

How do the Tea Baggers feel now that they have been taken for a ride? The deficits never mattered because the Chamber of Commerce and Wall St give the Republicans their marching orders.

Funny how no one saw how the default would have crushed the very same corporations the GOP depend on. Their financial backers were telling them that if they block the debt limit being raised, the campaign checks will stop.

Yet, it was always framed how Obama was weak. Well guess what? They got outmaneuvered again! The Republicans will get nothing from this stand-off but pissed off Tea Klanners, pissed off seniors, pissed off Independents, and pissed-off fake deficit hawks.

They made promises they said they would keep. That they’d never give in on.

Cowards. The lot of them.

Why do I feel like I’m watching a bunch of kids in kindergarten argue about shit, I can’t believe the crap the GOP is pulling right now, and the worst part it, this will all be spun to be the democrat’s fault.

(Source: liberalsarecool)