Posted on 10/16/2013 12:15:04 PM PDT by 11th_VA
COLLEGE PARK, Md., Oct. 16 (UPI) -- To end the U.S. government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling without accepting any meaningful Republican conditions, U.S. President Barack Obama has resorted to falsehoods, wounded American democracy and damaged U.S. global leadership.
The president has accused the House GOP majority of refusing to pay bills Congress has already racked up, not doing its job and defying the outcome of the 2012 election. The $17 trillion outstanding national debt funded past spending and raising the debt ceiling is all about the government spending more than it taxes going forward.
The U.S. Constitution requires that revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives, not the president's desk. If Obama wants to spend more than the country can afford, it requires him to negotiate with the House -- that's where the framers put the money.
The House was given this power because it is closest to the pulse of the people, who in 2012 elected a majority of representatives promising to cut spending and reduce deficits.
Obama's victory in the 2012 presidential election turned on many issues, including immigration, foreign policies toward China and in the Middle East and the environment. It is disingenuous to say his election affirmed voter support for the Affordable Care Act.
Poll after poll -- at the time the ACA was passed, during the election and now -- revealed the majority of Americans don't like the law and want it substantially revised or repealed. The ethnic breakdown of election results indicate Obama's victory was much more the result of Mitt Romney's inability to appeal to Latino and Asian voters.
Each month the government collects $250 billion in taxes and, if the Congress decided not to raise the debt ceiling, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew would have adequate resources to pay the $23 billion in interest to the public.
Each month, the government spends about $315 billion. If the House judges the resulting accumulation of $65 billion in new debt to be too burdensome -- as the public has repeatedly expressed by electing conservatives to the House -- the president has a constitutional duty to negotiate with the House rather than demand "clean bills" and spend as he pleases. The House would be derelict to simply roll over to presidential demands for powers the Constitution doesn't provide.
To pressure House Republicans, Lew has purposefully cultivated fear in financial markets by falsely stating the United States must default if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling. That would only happen if he failed to establish appropriate priorities for the $250 billion in taxes collected each month.
His doomsday rhetoric makes the U.S. government appear inept and irresponsible, has eroded the primary standing of U.S. securities in global markets and will weaken U.S. economic leadership in global forums for many years to come.
Senate negotiators will likely come to a deal acceptable to the president that reopens the government and raises the debt ceiling, and House Democrats and moderate Republicans will likely approve it.
The president's victory will be accomplished through deception and demagoguery, by violating the will of voters expressed in the 2012 congressional elections and the Constitution and damaging U.S. global standing. Those are mighty high prices to pay for a president's refusal to negotiate changes to a healthcare law voters clearly want changed and reducing budget deficits voters want slashed.
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(Peter Morici, an economist and professor at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, is a widely published columnist. Follow him on Twitter: @pmorici1)
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So somebody tell me - what did the DemocRATs win ???
The ability to move successfuully onto passing amnesty.
The Demonrats successfully stuffed it in the face of every God fearing conservative. Politically they bullied us and beat us like a mousy old hag shrew wife. Then they got to brag about it.
LOL Damn straight!
Dont forget the House passed all yeses back pay for all those Fed employees who got the ~ 2 weeks off furloughed, once the shutdown ends.
So the shutdown will cost more than leaving the government running once the surrender is complete, some will be charging overtime after they get back..
What did we get out of this again?
SEE — QEST -— TRA -—SHUN !!!
As long as we don't allow over time the IRS won't catch up on the audits - and Federal Employee Morale is being sapped - this beast won't die easily, but we can make it very weak ...
This was just the preparatory bombardment.
With all of this being revisited next year, the true assault has yet to come. Between now and then the collapse of healthcare.gov and Obamacare will be front and center in the public eye.
THAT’S what we win on.
I doubt that ...
For The Won, that's "win-win".
The rats got another trillion dollars to play with.
And they got away without passing a budget again.
They get to continue borrowing and spending with absolutely no accountability at all. They can continue to buy votes with borrowed money, thus assuring future political success.
The RINOS hate conservatives so much they’d side with the Democrats to get an immigration bill that pleases K Street and renders the TEA Party of no significance. Accordingly,
this is a deal out of spite, one that will make them incapable of delivering anything to anybody. It is suicide for sheer hatred for our having made their life of crooked deal-making difficult for them.
The IRS will charge overtime and hire more people to catch up, after getting back pay for not working.
So more useless $$$ added to the debt.
Then they will go on vacation for holidays
Yep, thats some whipping they got.
We have a Budget - it's called Sequestration, and it's gonna squeeze the RATs even more come Jan 15, 2014 ...
I think that this fiscal battle and the specter of the oncoming fiscal battle has killed Comprehensive Immigration Reform in this congress.
Think about the effect of income checks on the number of people who sign up for Obamacare (hint: it makes people pay more).
They have succeeded in accomplishing what they (and many Repubs) have been working towards for many, many years.
Destroying the American economy - knocking it down to the level of Europe's standard of living - thereby ushering the "New World Order" that the power elite have dreamed of these many decades.
Obama's Caliphate is closer than anyone ever thought possible.
No accountability to the US electorate, but certainly not no accountability at all . . . note what China, Russia and the European Union are doing in particular.
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